


Thanks for the Memories

by actionpackedlips



Category: Deadpool (Comics), Deadpool (Movieverse), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Deadpool Thought Boxes, Deadpool going down memory lane, Deadpool whump, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Misunderstandings, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Smut, Tony Stark Lives, and confronting his, boys being bad at feelings, cause I love that shit, it's a lot of sad but eventually, just pure, oh and, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:42:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 50,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29528664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actionpackedlips/pseuds/actionpackedlips
Summary: What if Mysterio never outed Peter?Deadpool comes back from a mission to find his favorite Spider-Man, his only Spider-Man, the boxes so helpfully remind him, missing. Specifically, kidnapped. Mysterio’s remaining crew were brimming with the need for revenge after their leader’s death, and so they vowed to use updated B.A.R.F tech to learn Spider-Man’s specific superpowers in order to harness it for themselves; another failed attempt to continue Mysterio’s grandiose plans of becoming the best superhero ever. With the help of the Avengers Peter is found, connected to a device not even Tony has full comprehension of.Deadpool valiantly volunteers to be hooked up; death was a regularly scheduled program for him, after all. He’d guide Spider-Man to a subconscious level that was safe to be extracted from, and (total bonus!) hopefully win his favor as Spidey’s knight in shiny leather! But once Deadpool enters, his deepest, darkest, repressed memories are on display for him and his friendly neighborhood spider to see. Deadpool fears not only what Spider-Man will think of him after it all, after everything he sees, but just what he’ll have to relive in order to rescue the man who not-so-secretly holds his heart.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Wade Wilson
Comments: 22
Kudos: 198
Collections: Spideypool Big Bang - The 2020 Collection





	1. A Spider Lost

**Author's Note:**

> We're here, folks. We're finally here.
> 
> I feel like I've been on a plane that's had turbulence since take off and I'm finally safe on solid, sweet land.
> 
> So here's me, kissing the ground, thankful I made it out alive. 😂 I'm glad I could get this story to you all. It's an odd one, and may not be for everyone, but it was fun and often therapeutic for me to write. So I'm glad that through all the rockiness I hit it's finally finished and you're able to read it. 
> 
> This story wouldn't be here but for a few people! Namely my betas [Atemluver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atemluver/pseuds/Atemluver) and [Jennicide](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yenyen/pseuds/Jennicide) who both helped me immensely in getting this ready for other eyes to read. I'm grateful to you both, for taking such time out of your own lives to work on this massive story. Thank you.
> 
> I also want to thank [cheekysstyles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheekysstyles/pseuds/cheekysstyles) and [bisexualbarry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualbarry) for just being there for me from the Big Bang beginning, checking in, and being a safe space to rant and rave about our stories. 
> 
> The last amazing thank you goes to my artist, [Moemai](https://www.moemai.fr), who I am BLOWN AWAY BY. Seriously, as a first time Big Banger, I am honored to have worked with such a talented and sweet soul who loved my story from the beginning. And then loved it even as it grew. Please go follow and support her, because her art is worth it! I hope you enjoy what she created for this story as much as I do, because I cherish it. Thank you again, Moemai. ♥️
> 
> I lied, one finally thank you and it goes to you: the reader. Thank you for being interested in this story, being interested in my work in general, thank you for the kudos and love and comments. I wrote this for you as much as for me...
> 
> Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While this is based primarily on movie Deadpool, I do include Deadpool's thought boxes:  
>  _{in italics}_ is Yellow  
>  **[in bold]** is White

* * *

Wade woke up one morning with an itch like something was wrong.

It wasn’t unusual. Most things were wrong in his life, or wrong in life in _general_ , and as such, he’d gotten quite used to the feeling.

This just felt… off, somehow. _Different_.

He looked around suspiciously. His suit was still thrown over the worn Laz-E-Boy he’d pilfered from some alleyway, his boots still in their place, propped up in the corner where he’d flung them off, and his katanas were still hung lovingly from their stands on the wall. Everything seeming in order, he mentally shrugged it off and let it settle into the rest of the stuff he fought and struggled with daily: pain, depression, ravenous hunger.

He decided it best to remedy the last one, because the other two he’d long since given up on fixing.

Wade putzed around, making himself some breakfast clad only in his boxers because his skin had decided to be a raging bitch today. He loaded up some scuzzy laundry, and went about doing the general housekeeping he’d neglected since his schedule had been jam-packed with no room for basic cleanliness, even of the limited Deadpool variety. It was the first time in a while he didn’t have a mission, or even a gold card (he was taking less these days anyway, since he’d pinky promised a certain cute arachnid) to take care of, so it left his day mind-numbingly open.

Deadpool only did two things when he had free time: jack off, or text Spider-Man.

Often, he was tempted to do both at the same time, but that crept a little _too much_ into skeevy territory, even for him. As a true gentleman, he wanted full consent for the sexy times, even the digital kind. There was a lot Wade was willing to do, but be disgustingly untoward his baby boy? _Gasp!_ Never.

So since jacking off was definitely _not_ on the table, due to the skin gods not blessing him with good fortune (like, ever), his text to Spider-Man went something like this:

 **bored bb, wnt 2 fight crime 2nite w me?** 🗡+🕸= 😍

From many long patrol nights to rooftop taco dates, Wade had come to learn that webs absolutely sucked when it came to replying to text messages. But no matter what, Spider-Man always made it a point to reply, even if it took a few hours. Even when all Wade sent was an eggplant emoji, he would take the time to reply with a simple eye roll to make sure Wade knew he’d seen his text. Even those small replies never failed to make Wade’s heart swoon a little.

So when an hour went by with no reply, Wade didn’t bat an eyelash.

When two went by, he didn’t think anything of it.

When his eyes glanced outside to see the golden-y pink-ish hues of a setting sun, that was when Wade frowned and swiped open his phone.

**busy day bb boy? maybe i’ll suit up and find you…**

Wade snickered as he pressed send, scarred fingers continued to type out another text,

**wnt to play hide and go seek? 😈**

His phone let out a _swoosh_ as his message flew through cyberspace to land itself directly in Peter’s phone.

 **my reward is a kiss, no take backsies** 💋💋💋💋 **c u soon, swtcheeks**

Surely he’d reply to that, Wade reasoned. Spidey always responded when he sent pet names, even if it was only to tell him, “I’m not your honeybee, Deadpool,” or, “what even _is_ a web-cake???? Sounds revolting.”

The merc suited up, unworried as the moon crept up into the sky, confident in his ability to find his baby boy. He took to the streets, scouring New York nightlife for signs of left over webs, a snarky repartee, and a flash of red and blue with a cute, pert ass. What he found instead was a corner store broken into, a cry for help unanswered, and absolutely no sign of Spider-Man.

That off feeling Wade had been feeling all day suddenly transformed into worry.

* * *

“I’m telling you,” Deadpool growled, fully suited and armed to the teeth with weapons, “that something is _wrong_. Very, very wrong.”

“Listen, Norman Bates, the only thing wrong here is your obsession, okay?” Tony replied lazily, focused on the task in front of him which looked to be an Iron Man gauntlet. _As if he didn’t have a couple hundred of those lying around already_ , Deadpool inwardly seethed.

The part he’d been welding together zapped and Tony flinched back, eyebrows furrowing, before continuing, “he’s a full time college student with a full time job. I’m not surprised he’s ignoring you. There isn’t enough time in anyone's schedule to accommodate your crazy.”

His desire to punch Tony Stark straight in his smug mug usually hung around mid-range whenever he was around the man, but it was reaching dangerous levels with each minute that ticked by. So instead of punching the billionaire's face in, he punched his work desk instead.

“You aren’t fucking _listening_ , Stark,” he barked in frustration. “Something’s not right. Spider-Man’s in danger.”

At the jostling of his table Tony looked up, clearly agitated. “And what exactly gives you that impression? I don’t hear from Pe- Spider-Man and my first instinct isn’t to assume he’s been gobbled up by villains.”

Deadpool thrust his phone into the man's crap-lousy face.

Tony’s face scrunched up and he looked like he was about to say something, but he reluctantly took the phone regardless. His thumb scrolled through all of Wade’s sent messages, ones that had been unresponded to _all week_.

Wade had attempted to find Spider-Man himself, but he hadn’t had much luck. Hence why he was even at Dick Tower to begin with.

Tony’s lip curled in disgust as his eyes scanned Deadpool’s texts.

“Well, buddy,” he directed at Deadpool, gaze still down on the phone as he continued to read, “I think I found your reason for the cold shoulder.”

His eyes flicked up to meet the white eyes of Deadpool’s mask. “I’m surprised he hasn’t put a restraining order out on you.”

Deadpool snatched his phone back, out of Tony’s grubby grease-stained hands.

“Call him,” he demanded. “Right now. If he doesn’t answer, promise me you’ll look into it.”

Tony sighed as if he was being put out greatly. “Will _you_ promise to leave me alone if I do?”

Deadpool rolled his eyes. “Sure, fine, whatever. Just call him.”

Tony didn’t reach for a phone. Instead he tilted his head a fraction toward the ceiling and asked, “Friday?”

“Yes, boss?” a female voice replied in a suspiciously irish accent. Deadpool raised his eyebrows. Stark was one weird dude.

“Give Spider-Man a call, please, and when you get a hold of him tell him his zombie dog’s loose in my lab.”

Deadpool crossed his arms, unamused. What a dickhead.

“Of course, boss.”

Deadpool’s mouth dropped open incredulously as his gaze turned upward. What a bitch!

Tony hid the beginning of his smirk by turning back to focus his attention on what he’d been tinkering with before Deadpool stormed in.

A few minutes went by as Deadpool tried not to pace, and instead fiddled with the little gizmos and gadgets strewn across Stark’s desk.

“Don’t touch those,” the mechanic snapped without even looking up at Deadpool, who snatched his hand back petulantly.

Deadpool tapped his boot instead to rid him of his growing nerves and lifted a glove to look at his adventure time watch. Even Jake seemed to look concerned. How long did it take a voice in the sky to make phone calls?

Also, why did everyone seem to have their own personal AI? Maybe he should look into getting one of those in his suit. It seemed all the rage now. Spider-Man’s Karen had come in handy more than once on their patrols together. Although he’d prefer a male, with a deep, gruff voice. One like Wolverines. He liked ‘em grumpy. Maybe even with a snappy Aussie accent. He’d call him Hugh just because it sounded like a good, strong na—

“Boss?” her voice finally came back breaking Deadpool out of his wandering thoughts.

Tony hummed uninterestedly, like he already knew what she was about to tell him. “What’s Spider-Man got to say? And don’t be afraid to share with the class, I think this one’s gonna need to hear the cold, hard truth.”

“Well,” her voice conveyed reluctance. “I wasn’t actually able to get a hold of him.”

Deadpool’s heart sank as Tony sat up straighter in his chair. “Did you try calling again?”

“It went straight to voicemail each time, boss. I made several attempts.”

Tony was stroking his goatee and his gaze had gone a little unfocused, lost in thought.

“Thank you, Friday. Can you ping Karen for me? See if you can get a hold of her instead.”

Another minute went by but this time Tony didn’t return back to his work. His fingers tapped an uneven rhythm against his thigh.

Even Deadpool could tell this was a habit out of nervousness. It seemed this was starting to worry him, too. Deadpool couldn’t even feel smug about it; he would gladly be wrong if it meant Spider-Man was somewhere safe.

“Mr. Stark,” the AI’s voice sounded worried now, “I wasn’t able to get ahold of Karen but reaching out to her seemed to set a stalled emergency protocol into motion. I was forwarded a video you need to see. Sending it over now.”

Tony shoved the gauntlet he’d been working so tediously on aside as if it was nothing more than a desk trinket. He pinched the image found on the screen underneath it before flinging it up. It expanded into an impressive, slightly transparent full screen midair in front of them. Any other day Deadpool would have found this to be totes amazeballs and demanded how to get one himself, but now his eyes were trained on the still video clip, thoughts buzzing with nothing but worry.

“Play the video, Friday,” Tony commanded.

As the video started playing, the harsh, tired breathing of Spider-Man came out loud and echoing in the silent lab.

“Fuck,” Spider-Man cursed on screen as he dodged a beam of light that zapped easily through a flung web.

He seemed to be fighting some sort of ‘Villain of the Week’ and Deadpool instantly regretted that he hadn’t been there for Spider-Man. He’d taken a long ass Shield mission, some boring recon in the middle of nowhere with less baddies to kill than had been promised. He would have much rather been guarding Spider-Man’s back in New York.

Deadpool watched as Spidey flung another web out ineffectively. The villain shot another beam of light that exploded in the spot Spider-Man had just vacated. Deadpool felt his heart leap right up into his throat. That had been close. _Too close_.

But Spider-Man was still faster even in his fatigue, and swung around behind it, feet extended with force to kick but then something unexpected happened. He went right through the villain. He shouted, having miscalculated, and let go of his web too soon causing him to tumble across the ground roughly. He groaned as he got up, watching as the villain flickered in and out of view for a few seconds.

“What?” Spider-Man muttered, disbelief thick in his voice. “Wait a minute… I’ve seen this befor—”

Suddenly, the enemy multiplied and the thought he’d had been ready to voice was lost as a hundred beams went off, each one honed in on the webbed hero who had to dance and swing and acrobat his way around them all.

The next few minutes were nothing but shaky footage. Deadpool’s stomach was starting to flip with motion sickness and dread. Whoever this was, Spider-Man had been grossly outnumbered. He’d had to fight them all alone. The merc sucked in a breath when suddenly Spider-Man was sent flying, and a gloved hand reached out to stop the hero from skidding painfully across the pavement again.

For the briefest of seconds the fighting ceased. Spider-Man righted himself. His masked head whipped around only to find he was already surrounded by more enemies. The hero’s breathing that escaped him came out uneven, harder and harsher, and Deadpool heard the unmistakable hitch in his breath that meant Webs was getting worn out.

Usually, that was when Deadpool would either arrive or take over, his brute strength and inability to die mixing perfectly with Spidey’s speed and agility securing a clean sweeping win. They worked well together, Spider-Man and Deadpool. Deadpool would never forgive himself if something happened to Spidey without him being there...

Something whizzed through the air and Spider-Man let out a startled yell. There was no doubt of his severe exhaustion if his senses hadn't warned him ahead of time.

Deadpool’s blood ran cold.

_Please don’t die. Please don’t be dead._

He wasn’t prepared to watch something like that happen. _Couldn’t_ watch something like that. But he kept his eyes glued to the screen, the same as Stark’s were.

“What…” Spider-Man's voice sounded slurred and confused, and a red gloved hand came up to cup something embedded in his neck. A high hiss of pain slid through his teeth as he pulled the object free and stared down at the slim object resting in his hand.

It was a tranq dart.

Deadpool seethed with anger. This wasn’t an enemy gone wrong, another baddie of the week set off on a criminal streak from long festering daddy-issues, hell bent on retaliation upon a world that wasn't fair. No, this had been calculated and intentional.

The dart fell from uncoordinated fingers and the last thing Spider-Man uttered was, “K-karen, call Dea—” before an electrical charge hummed through the air and an ear piercing scream rang out through the streets.

The video ended abruptly but Deadpool could still hear those screams echoing in his ears.

“Fuck,” Tony cursed, his face paled to a ghostly white.

* * *

If it was just Deadpool, he’d have gone in guns a blazing, three Hello Kitty bags full of ammunition, hopped up on pure unadulterated, unyielding rage, rage, fucking rage.

But he’d asked the Avengers for help and as such he got Captain _‘Mr. Rules’_ America.

“It’s been two weeks already,” Wade growled in frustration across the unnecessarily large table.

Half the Avengers were either off-world or on missions at any given time; a table that could easily fit twenty people seemed oddly superfluous.

“We want to find him just as badly as you, Deadpool,” Steve Rogers declared from the other side of it, hands on his hips like some reprimanding grandmother.

 **[He’s old enough to** be **one.]**

Deadpool snorted. Both at White’s comment, and Roger’s statement.

He could practically hear the creak of the Captain’s jaw as it tightened; development of TMJ was always slightly higher whenever Deadpool was around.

“We have no clear idea who’s behind this yet,” Rogers continued on in a sensible tone, “or even what they want. We need intel first before we go roughing up every villain Spider-Man has ever fought in the last decade.”

Wade slapped his hands down angrily on the top of the mahogany surface. “It works fine for me when I do it. We don’t know if he’s alright or not. We don’t know what they’re _doing to him_.”

Instantly, Wade could tell Rogers had gotten the wrong idea because his eyes went soft around the edges.

Fucking Pity.

“Wade.” The familiar use of the mercs first name just raised his hackles even more. “Weapon X has been wiped out. Abolished. They don’t have him.”

Wade huffed, shoving off the table to take a step back and cross his arms. As if a program as large and as dangerous as _that_ could ever be fully shut down.

Still, this had nothing to do with Weapon X.

“It doesn’t have to be Weapon X,” Wade grumbled back. “It doesn’t have to be _them_ at all. Anyone’s capable of torture. Of mutant experimentation. We don’t know what they want. Stark said the technology Spider-Man faced was linked to a group involved with Mysterio. Which means we’ve got something to go off of. If I—”

“No.”

Deadpool narrowed his eyes at the signature _Captain America_ voice.

Well, it wouldn’t work on him. He was Canadian.

Deadpool didn’t even need to say it, his body language said enough. He wasn’t going to back down, not where Spider-Man was concerned. That kid had done too much for Wade through the years to have him give up on him, over America’s star spangled simple order of _‘no’_.

Steve clearly saw his defiance too, and sighed. “Mysterio’s been dead for quite awhile, and there hasn’t even been _whispers_ about the small group he left behind. Just—give me one more week. Just one. If we don’t pick up on anything, then I promise we can try your way.”

“ _My way_ would have gotten us answers the first day I noticed something was wrong,” Wade pointed out with a snarl.

“That may be true,” Steve told him, “But we can’t just go around killing people for information.”

Deadpool knew from experience his predatory smirk was easy to see through his mask.

“Who said anything about killin’ ‘em?”

Not a lot of people would think to use the word perceptive and Deadpool in the same sentence. Then again, not a lot of people truly _knew_ Deadpool at all. He hadn’t gotten his reputation by being some dense fool. The merc could read the set of Steve's shoulders and the purse of his lips easily, and knew the man was growing fed up with their conversation.

So was he.

“One week, America,” Deadpool pointed a leather-clad finger at him threateningly. “Then I show you star spangled bitches how a real man gets shit done.”

Rogers pursed lips tipped down into a small frown, clearly unhappy with the word choice, but he gave a small nod all the same.

“If for any reason we don’t get there in time,” Deadpool threw lazily over his shoulder as he turned and stalked right out of Asshat HQ, “I’m holding you personally responsible.”

He let the slam of the conference doors punctuate the ominous threat behind his words.

* * *

It ended up being a little birdie who helped them find Spider-Man. Or so Wade would say anytime someone brought it up.

Hawkeye had returned from a mission a few days after Deadpool’s meeting with Steve, roughed up and in major need of electrolytes. But this little birdie ignored his aches and hunger pangs and made Deadpool his first stop.

The man knew he was skipping a few rungs on the ladder, if not completely ignoring the whole dang thing altogether, but Hawkeye and Deadpool, while not necessary _friends_ , were far closer than a lot of his other working relationships. So, despite the dressing down he’d likely get from Cap later, damn disappointed stare included, Clint continued on anyway; limping a determined path down the corridor to the room Deadpool had sequestered himself in.

He knocked a quick rap against the doorframe, knowing full well the merc would be in. Gossip was the number one currency around this place, and a decked-out Deadpool stalking the halls was hot tea these days apparently. If he wasn’t at headquarters, then he was out looking for Spider-Man, and as far as Clint had been told that trail had barely been lukewarm since the beginning.

“Wade,” Clint greeted as he noticed Deadpool’s bulk hunched over on the much-too-tiny standard issue bed. He leaned his uninjured side against the cool metal door frame, crossing his arms gingerly. He was pretty sure he had a fractured rib. But hell, he’d live.

“Can I talk to you for a sec?”

Deadpool gave a disinterested grunt, not looking up from where he was cleaning his already immaculate-looking guns. Clint couldn’t blame him, really. He’d restring his bows a thousand times over whenever he was stressed, even if they clearly didn’t need it, and from the shine of the gun in his hands, he’d say something similar was going on here. But Clint wasn’t here to judge and he certainly wasn’t gonna blame the man for needing something to take his mind off it all.

If it had been ‘Tasha...

“I’m not up for your brand of target practice today, Legalos,” Deadpool muttered dismissively, gaze still focused on the glock in his hands.

Clint’s lips quirked up. It was fun training with a target that could evade and calculate his moves… and take a few arrows to the chest no problem. But no, he wasn't here for that. That was the furthest thing from his mind when all he wanted was a hot shower, even hotter food, and to sleep for damn near a week.

“Got somethin’,” Clint told him instead and he made sure his voice carried the meaning of just _what_ he had for the dejected looking sort-of-ex-mercenary in front of him.

That had his head cocking up, gun forgotten in his hands.

Clint nodded at the questioning stare, and the glimmer of hope it held. He was always so damn surprised by just how well that mask could convey the man's expressions underneath.

“Whispers of Mysterio’s crew holding up in an old Hydra nest not far from where I was stationed,” Clint told him.

Deadpool stood up, setting the gun down on the small bedside table.

“Where was this?” He asked as he stepped closer. “Who’d you extract that intel from? Did you confirm it? Did they mention Spider-Man? Is anyone left up there to scout ahead and do some recon?”

Every time Clint attempted to answer a question Deadpool fired off another one. He sucked in a harsh breath from the burn spreading along his ribcage. He was starting to regret skipping his trip to medical to seek Deadpool out first.

Deadpool’s eyes flickered down to where Clint’s hand shifted to rest along his aching ribs, and his assailing questions died down.

“Listen,” Clint finally managed to say after taking a few shallow, steadying breaths. The pain was starting to become overwhelming, making him lightheaded. “I’ll tell you everything I know once I’ve got some food and painkillers in me. I just wanted you to be the first to hear we got a lead. It isn’t much to go on and it could be nothing, but it’s something.”

Deadpool nodded. He shifted in place, looming in front of Clint awkwardly before he muttered lowly, “I appreciate it.”

Clint knew he would. It’s exactly why he’d taken one step off the helicarrier and turned left towards their rooms instead of right towards medbay.

“Let’s walk and talk, ‘Pool,” he jerked his head to motion down the corridor, a hiss escaping him as he straightened up from the doorway.

And so they made the long trek to medical together, despite it being a place that Deadpool made himself scarce from. He rarely needed it anyway, coining his fast regenerative properties whenever prodded to go, and wasn’t often invited back after Avenger team-ups regardless.

Even though it was slow going on Clint’s side, what with his limp and ragged breathing, Deadpool didn’t seem to mind. He just shortened his stride, making sure to keep himself close enough without hovering, and didn’t ask anymore questions despite Clint knowing he was itching for answers.

Clint would maybe rethink that whole _not friends_ thing, after all.

* * *

Deadpool didn’t need much more than _whispers_.

Less than twenty four hours after Hawkeye’s intel reached him, they were soaring through the air in the helicarrier.

Hawkeye seemed grim-faced to be back in the air instead of in his bed, sleeping for a week like he’d planned; yet again he found himself embarking on another mission, after just finishing up with one. Deadpool noticed that his birdie-friend still looked a little pale around the feathers, wincing whenever he moved too quickly. Surely, he wouldn’t be the greatest asset, coming injured as he was, but it couldn’t be helped. They had limited Avengers to work with, with Thor being off-world, Natasha deep in an undercover sting, and Banner too embedded in timely projects to step away.

What a bunch of self-indulgent assholes.

Besides Deadpool and Hawkeye, it was very slim-pickings for his ‘dream team’. Of course, Stark and Rogers came, along with a handful of SHIELD agents the captain had insisted on for back up. Deadpool knew, of course, that the agents Cap had requested were for America’s Ass’s peace of mind, more than anything else. Of course, it seemed wise to go in with more back up, especially since they were unsure exactly what they’d encounter there. But Deadpool knew it wasn’t the _only_ reason. _American Dream_ wanted the extra man power in case they needed to wrangle _him_ in.

Normally, something like that would irritate him. Hadn’t he proved himself yet to these pompous pricks? But he couldn’t find it in him to get all up in arms about it. It wasn’t the most pressing issue at the moment. Deadpool considered them more of a nuisance than a threat, and barely even acknowledged they were there. They’d only get in his way and make it harder for him to tell who he was supposed to be shooting at. He wasn’t going to curb his bullets for people who didn’t know how to stay the fuck out of his way.

Because there was no way in hell he was grabbing Spidey and hauling ass without _some_ unaliving. Spidey and his moral code would just have to understand that even Deadpool had limits, and some dick-heads kidnapping Spider-Man was one of them.

Taking what was his was a sure way to lose limbs… and lives.

Deadpool let his elbows rest on his knees, hunching in on himself. He cradled his head in his hands and squeezed, letting the bite of his hands digging into his skull ease his racing blood-thirsty, _possessive_ thoughts.

He shouldn’t be thinking like that. Spider-Man wasn’t _his_ , that much was clear. He _was_ his friend though, and Deadpool would go to the end of the earth to protect that friendship, to protect the wonderful man who’d given him a chance when everyone else said to leave Deadpool on the curb, to be collected with the trash on Wednesdays. Even if Spidey never became his, and Wade’s harrowing crush lasted longer than Spidey’s own life would, he’d protect that spider-booty until his last dying breath.

 _God_. He rubbed at his eyes through the mask, this was getting depressing, fast.

Hawkeye's soft call came from across the way where they were sitting opposite each other. “You okay?”

Deadpool snorted.

 ** _{[We’re never okay]}_** came the chorus of two different voices inside his head.

“I’m fine,” Deadpool huffed out. Even if it was a ridiculous lie at the moment, he soon would be, because he was about to play hero and save his princess from where he was locked away in the highest room in the tallest tower; wielding his katana’s to fight through all kinds of monsters just to win his Spidey back.

Spidey just better be in that damn castle.

They settled back into silence, Hawkeye preserving his strength and dozing off against the wall while Deadpool continued in vain to calm his distressed inner voices and thoughts that scurried across his mind like mice.

It felt like no time at all before they were touching down, the helicarrier on stealth mode as it landed, invisible and silent in a field about a half mile out from their destination.

Deadpool stayed seated for Captain America’s usual “rah rah I’m the leader of this gang, go team” huddle, having already given himself his own form of a pep talk when he went over _his_ plan. He’d work with them as long as they didn’t get in his way, but he wasn’t disillusioned to what this was: a rescue mission.

Wade was here for one thing and one thing only. Anyone else in his line of vision was expendable and he was prepared to do some damn near _brutal_ rescuing even if those methods didn’t fit into Señor Americano’s approach of “capture, _not kill_ ”. Deadpool felt Cap’s eyes roam over to him as the man finished up his little speech.

He _tried_ to keep his sneering to a minimum, but honestly his face just kinda settled this way most days.

_{RBF!}_

Only when Freedom Flag and Iron Dick led the charge out of the helicarrier did Wade allow himself to bend down to grab the Hello Kitty ammo bag he’d shoved unnoticed below his seat. Honestly, he thought Mr. ’No-Violence’ would be the first to sniff it out. But alas, Deadpool one, Captain Loser zero.

Deadpool swung it up and over his shoulder, ready to make his way out _on his own_ , when soft, amused laughter had him jumping slightly.

“I was wondering why you’d gotten here so early.”

Hawkeye eyed his bag in clear amusement. He already had his arrows strapped to his back, his bow resting comfortably in his hands. Deadpool had thought he’d left already, following the Captain's lead, but it’d apparently taken him longer than normal to get himself ready, all things considered. Deadpool noticed the archer's slight wince as he adjusted the quiver’s strap tighter across his chest.

Hawkeye nodded to the nearly-bursting bag thrown over Deadpool’s shoulder, “Didn’t want Cap seeing that, did you?”

“Just wanted to make sure I got a good seat, yanno?” he shrugged a broad shoulder casually, bag jostling, pointedly ignoring that last comment. He wasn’t afraid of Captain America. Wade was a true blue Canadian, even if he did most of his work outside its borders, and as such, felt that superiority down to his bones. It wasn’t hard, what with their better healthcare, all around nicer manners, and far more importantly, superior maple syrup. 100% pure and free of racial stereotyping with each sweet bite, baby.

 _No_ , he thought as he adjusted the bag strap digging into his shoulder, he wasn’t scared of _America’s ass_.

But he _was_ afraid he’d cause a hiccup in Spidey’s rescue, and _that_ he couldn’t have. Wade was too close to finding the webslinger, and Captain America would take one look at his ammunition and his face would twist into that _‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed’_ frown only to tell Wade that he couldn’t do whatever he was about to do.

What he was _about_ to do was whatever _the fuck_ it took to bring Spider-Man back home to New York.

Because he couldn’t even _think_ of the alternative: that he’d been too late… that there would be no _rescue_ today, but only a recovery.

Deadpool heaved the bag higher onto his shoulder, agitated by the sheer thought of Spidey’s potential dire condition. The merc continued out past Hawkeye, feeling confident in the distance between Captain America and himself. He would be able to slink his own way through without anyone stepping on his toes or getting in his way. Deadpool wasn’t good at hearing _no_ and Captain America wasn’t good at dealing with anyone defying his orders. It was best if they just gave each other a wide berth.

As one could imagine, they went together as well as water and oil. Frankly, it was probably why he’d never been sniffed at for recruitment onto the Avengers Initiative; even if a certain arachnid thought he’d make a good addition (which was just laughable to Wade, because well... if Spider-Man wasn’t on the team, there really wasn’t much reason for him to be on it, in all honesty).

**[We all know why you were never recruited into the Avengers. You’re a PR nightmare.]**

Deadpool ignored White’s disparaging comment, as he was often wont to do.

“It’s just some overnight clothes, a spare toothbrush,” he told Clint nonchalantly before he reached the entrance, “ya know, in case this takes longer than planned.”

Hawkeye snorted, shaking his head as he followed the merc out.

“You’re the biggest bullshitter, Deadpool.”

* * *

Deadpool reloaded as he stalked along the corridor, gun still smoking from when he’d used it on the guy currently painting the doorway he’d just entered red.

So much for maintaining stealth, huh?

He’d managed to evade Rogers and his team so far, having found a vent along the side of the building and shimmied his way in that way. He’d stashed his extra ammo in said vent before climbing out and jumping down into a deserted hallway. Deadpool had figured he was probably a few floors ahead of them, at least.

 _Good_ , he thought as he continued along, _more alone time for me without Goody Two-Shoes McGee and Daddy Issues Extraordinaire cramping my style._ Although he figured it wouldn’t be long before they caught up with him, especially with the excessive amount of rounds he’d just pumped into that guy back there.

He jogged up a flight of stairs, still no leads on locating a certain spider. The fact was, this shitty research facility, or torture chamber, maybe both, seemed to be disturbingly empty. Not to mention, the people that he _did_ encounter were entirely unhelpful or unwilling to spill the Busch’s Baked Beans on where they were keeping his damsel in distress. He’d barely encountered a handful of people so far, and Deadpool realized he’d _totally_ overpacked in the ammo department ( _again_ ) as silent halls echoed with his determined footsteps.

Each uncooperative person only stoked his anger.

Not talking was their first mistake.

The second was scrambling to make any attempts of warning their head boss man of him being there.

Deadpool turned the corner and two armed, frazzled security guard’s skidded to a halt before him. One of them lifted a radio as Deadpool lifted a finger.

He waggled it back and forth scoldingly, “ _Wrongo._ ”

It was over before it began, bad guy brain’s splattering along the wall like some fucked up Rorshack inkblot test (Deadpool _always_ struggled with those—no surprise _there_ ), and he still had no idea where Spider-Man was in this godforsaken place!

Deadpool eyed the rapidly spreading pool of blood and stepped around it, not wanting to squelch the entire way around the building. He was way too proud to admit maybe there was some merit to Mr. Rogers’ “no kill” rule. If only because bullets through brains didn’t allow for great swaths of information afterwards. Plus it was always _so messy_.

 _{We like that part, though!}_ Yellow reminded him giddily from the back of his mind.

He ignored it.

“Okay, DP,” he muttered to himself as he soldiered on, checking rooms as he went. “Next person you see you’re getting info _before_ you go all shooty.”

_{But that’s no fun.}_

He shook his head against the pouty voice in his mind. This wasn’t about fun… not this time. It was about finding his booty-licious missing friend.

It didn’t take long for him to clear the entire hallway, just a few large rooms with spare equipment and loads of dust bunnies. They’d analyzed the building's blueprints before takeoff, and while it wasn’t a very large building, it still had quite a few floors all things considered. Deadpool’s Spidey-sense was telling him his princess was at the very tippy top of this particular castle, and he was going to go up there and do every unimaginable thing he could think of to the one that took his spider away. Who’s Bowser now, _bitch?_

Climbing up another flight of stairs he hugged the walls in case anyone was standing on the landing above him, but there was no one waiting when he finally made it there. Quiet as a church mouse he turned the handle to the door, pushing it open cautiously before peeking his head out.

Nothing.

Everything was calm and quiet.

He’d definitely made his presence known by now…

Wade didn’t pout, but it was a near thing.

Where was everyone in this damn place? Was the recruitment for villains _that_ low? They should try a craigslist ad or something because this was just pathetic. No alarms, no bad guys running to meet him except mall-cop wannabes. This was definitely not his idea of an epic rescue. When he regaled the account of his heroic efforts to retrieve the man in question there would certainly be far more action and death-filled moments than this. Fuck! Even _Walmart_ had better security than this!

Deadpool continued his way through the silent hallway, a somber sulk to his steps.

**[You could just take the elevator to the top, you know.]**

Deadpool paused, mouth agape. “Use _cheat-codes_ to jump to the end? Not in my Spider-Man rescue!”

 **[You really** are **a lunatic.]**

Deadpool rolled his eyes and taunted back childishly, “I know you are but what am I?”

A giggle echoed through his mind while a clearly annoyed silence followed from the deeper, far more level headed, yet still insanely bloodthirsty, voice in the back of his head.

“Listen,” Deadpool continued chatting out loud as he maneuvered along the deserted hallway, “I want to get to Spider-Man as fast as you two do. If we all remember, _I_ was the one who noticed something was wrong, thank you very much. He’s been missing for far too long, extra thanks to Captain _‘Let’s do this my way and wait 10 business days’_ America, and we have no idea who these schmucks are besides Fishbowl's lackeys. They’re too unknown and unpredictable... I’ll leave no rock unturned!”

_{Yes, bring back our Hercules!}_

“Honey,” Deadpool couldn’t refrain from quoting as he turned a corner, a fact Yellow knew well, “you mean _Hunkules_!”

 **[Well,]** White drawled in a voice dripping with disdain, **[don’t come crying to me when you're too late because you spent all your time trying to turn this rescue into a poor excuse for a James Bond film.]**

“Aw, Whitey, don’t be like that.” Deadpool tried the last door on the left. He jiggled the handle. _Oh shucks_ , he thought, wryly, _locked_. “I could give Daniel Craig a run for his money.”

**[I was thinking more along the lines of Sean Connery.]**

_{Oooh, does that make Spidey ‘Honey Ryder’?}_

Deadpool waggled his eyebrows at the suggestion as he twisted the doorknob in his vice-like grip, feeling the metal give and snap under his hand, and the door swung open easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. “I like the way you guys think. We need _something_ to raise the word count. We have a minimum to hit, dontcha’ know. We’ve got to make every scene count!”

An exasperated huff and a deranged giggle were the only things that followed that enlightened exclamation.

Deadpool peeked his head into the room and… “ _Goddammit!_ ” his curse reverberated in the empty room.

Nothing, again! Gosh, he’s starting to think that their little hawk man was talking some serious shit.

Deadpool was once again left alone with just his thoughts ( _ha_!) as he continued his way up through the last of the building, not seeing hide nor hair of another soul—not even from his own team.

He cursed as he stalked up to the elevator, conveniently stopped right at his floor.

“Now that’s just lazy writing,” Deadpool muttered as he pressed the button and the doors opened with a cheery _ping!_

He stepped inside, and several bloodspattered Deadpool’s greeted him on mirrored walls.

“Guess I’ve got to go find Mr. Rogers and tell ‘em the bad news. No need for them to follow in my fruitless footsteps through this neighborhood.”

_{Think they’ve found our bloodtrail yet?}_

Deadpool shrugged uncaringly, glancing at the array of lit up numbered buttons as he tried to guess what floor the group might be on.

**[You wouldn’t be standing here guessing if you’d just joined them.]**

Wade snorted. “You know as well as I do that we don’t play well with others… and you hate Rogers. What gives?”

 _{Yeah}_ Yellow chimed in, _{you’re always complaining he’s stuck up and self-righteous whenever we team up, White!}_

White growled. **[** We **think he’s a pompous asshole, but that hardly matters! Did you two nimwits forget whoever has Spider-Man could very well be torturing him right now, or** worse **?]**

White’s voice held an undertone of worry, and it wasn’t like he didn’t make a very valid point. Sometime after that first bullet had left it’s chamber, Deadpool had started slipping back into his normal merc-mode like a warn glove, where his amusement and bloodthirst clouded his vision. But this wasn’t one of his regular missions, and while he’d started out with the best intentions of finding Spidey, he definitely began to stray from them.

Deadpool was just about to open his mouth to say something when his eyes caught a certain button nestled below all of the rest:

_Basement Level._

This button gleamed back at him, its sheen slightly more worn than the others.

“Fuck _me_ ,” Deadpool spat.

There hadn’t been a basement on the blueprints. Which in hindsight _should_ have raised some eyebrows, considering the size of the building, and honestly what baddie _didn’t_ have a basement torture chamber? But Deadpool could admit he wasn’t thinking in his right mind, far too worried and focused on finding Spidey _pronto_. No one else had brought it up either and it irked him that these self-proclaimed _“mightiest heroes on earth”_ could overlook something so clichéd.

**[I told you we should have used the elevator.]**

Deadpool’s finger hit the button so hard it creaked under the abuse, the doors closing with another far-too-cheerful ping before the lift started its slow descent.

Screw finding Rogers and the justice brigade, the time for action was _now_. That constant nagging feeling of danger that had been throbbing in the back of his mind was telling him _this_ was definitely where they were keeping Spider-Man.

Deadpool made quick work of checking the remaining ammunition in his guns, replacing a clip that was near empty. He contemplated heading back to retrieve his ammo bag, just in case, because let’s be honest, counting down a clip of bullets _sucked ass_. He’d know, since all he’d had was maximum effort and a barely full clip when he’d confronted Francis all those years ago. The takeaway on _that_ one had been that he totally _could_ make all of twelve bullets work with a little conservation and quick thinking, but he didn’t _want_ to have to get creative right now. Instead, he wanted a bullet in each person’s brain who thought they could take Spider-Man from him and get away with it.

Deadpool contemplated the trek back through the warehouse, but with a check of his guns he quickly scratched the idea. He had more than enough ammo to neutralize whatever they had coming his way, and he’d wasted enough time already.

He wanted Spider-Man out of these fuckers grasps and into his own _yesterday_. Screw the additional ammo. Fuck, he’d incapacitated someone with his own arm once. It’d really put a whole new definition to the term ‘fisting’. Surely he’d manage.

The floors crept into single digits as Deadpool jumped in place, shaking his arms out as he rotated his shoulders to expend upon the energy that coursed through his veins. He began to mumble-sing the chorus to Europe’s _The Final Countdown_ as Yellow added an impressively disastrous accompaniment while White stayed stubbornly and judgingly silent. Deadpool fought through a twinge in his shoulder, and stretched it out further. He certainly didn’t want to miss a shot because he hadn’t properly stretched.

How _embarrassing._

When Wade had finished, he felt looser and more limber, ready for a throw down, a full on fight, a _final countdown_ , if you may, and as the first floor passed and he descended further still, he gripped his guns tighter. As the lift shuddered underneath his feet with it’s arrival and the doors slid open, the first (and last) thing any of these idiot goons would see would be the barrel of his guns.

“It’s the final countdown, _motherfuckers_ ,” Deadpool growled, rushing out guns first, eyes focused on the first sign of movement, his fingers trigger happy.

“ _Woah_ ,” a familiar voice exclaimed, jumping out of the line of his fire, and suddenly Deadpool was pinned back along the wall.

Deadpool blinked at the arrow protruding out of his shoulder. Did a little birdy just _shoot him?_

An “ow” fell sarcastically out of the corner of his downturned mouth, but he was far more concerned with why Hawkeye of all people was down here. This was Deadpool’s shining moment, thank you very much.

“Sorry,” Hawkeye apologized in a voice anything but. “Maybe don’t go exiting elevators like a loony toon next time, _Jesus._ ”

Deadpool’s mouth hung open, affronted. “Exsqueeze you. I’m not a _loony toon_. I’m a dashing hero coming to save his maiden.”

There was a slight, yet completely judgemental, pause.

“Oh you’re loony all right,” Hawkeye muttered quietly masked with a hint of a laugh, and Deadpool’s eyes narrowed.

“Cap’s been trying to find you,” he informed Deadpool, louder this time.

Deadpool broke off the arrow in his shoulder, ignoring the little whimper Hawkeye gave at the action.

“What,” he hissed as he extracted the rest of it. “He didn’t follow the bloody brick road?”

Hawkeye rolled his eyes. “You mean did he find your body trail? Yes. Yes, he did. And you're not on comms, so you haven’t gotten the luxury of hearing him bitch about it.”

“Oh no,” Deadpool giggled, “he wasn’t a happy camper was he?”

“No,” Hawkeye huffed, “and we’ve realized this could be the place they're holding Spider-Man for nearly half an hour now. We were wondering where you were.”

“Clearing every fucking cobweb out of this place,” Deadpool grumbled. “Blueprints never showed a basement,” he grunted, still feeling guilty that he’d never considered it.

Hawkeye dipped his head. He must have been feeling similar, too.

_{Well, good!}_

**[It’s just embarrassing between all of you no one thought to check into it!]**

“Yeah, yeah,” Deadpool waved his hand to clear the thoughts away. “Enough with the guilt trip, you didn’t think of it either!”

It said a lot for how often he spoke to himself out loud that Hawkeye barely threw him a look at his antics.

“ _Anyway_ ,” the archer said with a nervous cough once Wade’s outburst had finished, “I’ll let Cap know you’re here. He wants to rally before barging in. He thinks they’ll have a lot more men than they had up there.” Clint made a gesture towards the ceiling, “now that they likely know we’re here, with this possibly being their base entrance and all.”

Hawkeye spoke the next words hesitantly, as if merely muttering them would cause Deadpool to fly off the handle again. “He wants us to wait for him until he gets here. _All_ of us.”

As Clint seemed to predict, the words incited rage within him.

“Fuck that, I’m not waiting,” Deadpool growled out, stalking towards the door. “If Spider-Man’s in there I’m not waiting another goddamn moment to get to him.”

Hawkeye slid in front of him, a hand pressed with purpose on Deadpool’s chest in an attempt to stop the merc. White eyes slid down to the hand invading his personal bubble before flicking back up, eyebrows raised.

“If I have to go through you to get to Spider-Man, _Robin Hood_ , I’m sorry to say—”

A frustrated growl of his own escaped Hawkeye’s throat and the hand he had on Deadpool’s chest left to run through his own hair instead, leaving it standing up haphazardly.

“Why am I _always_ the Deadpool sitter?” Clint grumbled as Deadpool shouldered past him, but Hawkeye still turned to follow. He muttered something into his earpiece before he extracted the device all together and it hung down out of his ear, most likely so he wouldn’t have to hear the yelling that was sure to come through over it.

Spider-Man had waited long enough, and so had Deadpool. He’d made a mistake earlier, took too much time, and hoped that mistake hadn’t cost Spider-Man his life, but now was _go time_. He just knew his Spider-Babe was beyond that door, and nothing Stars and Stripes ordered was going to stop him from barging in and making those assholes _pay_.

Deadpool’s grip on his gun shifted as he looked at the intimidating steel doors blocking his path, then to the little square beside it. He lifted his right hand, a finger sliding down to squeeze the trigger, and out came a loud, rapid fire shot at the lock. Aim small, miss small. Sparks flew from the entry pad as the doors in front of them slid open.

Hawkeye winced as he adjusted his hearing aid, the gunshot that reverberated in the small room must have been ten times louder for him. Deadpool saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and threw an apologetic look over his shoulder.

But all he got in return was an eye roll and a dismissive wave. “It’s not the first time and it certainly won’t be the last,” Hawkeye said glibly. “Let’s get moving before Cap catches up to us and skins us both alive.”

Deadpool grinned wolfishly. Captain America was but a blip on his radar honestly, but he _loved_ it when teammates turned rogue with him. The smell of defiance in the air was truly invigorating, especially when it involved the Avengers.

“ _Hell yeah_ ,” he fist bumped the air, gun still in hand. “Time to make the chimi- _fucking_ -changas!”

A heavy, defeated sigh sounded behind him but it was over the sound of an arrow being notched.

Deadpool made his way past the now broken, open doors, and Hawkeye followed a beat later, muttering and cursing under his breath about the poor decisions he’d made that had managed to lead him right to this moment.

* * *

Despite what anyone might think, Hawkeye and Deadpool actually worked quite well as a team.

It wasn’t often they were put on missions together, what with Deadpool’s speciality and Hawkeye’s being drastically different. Hawkeye had embraced his name, perfect for the ops that needed an eye in the sky, where someone who could work with range and get the drop from up high was preferred. Deadpool however, was far better equipped for tactile, hands on missions. While he was familiar with a scope, he far favored being up close; craved the smell of fear sweat on someone before he got the drop on them, as their last moments bled out and all that was left for them to see was his leather clad sneer.

But when the time came for them to suit up together? Their teamwork was damn near magical, and Deadpool had never loved a man’s arrow as much as he loved Hawkeye’s.

_{Hehe, arrow.}_

**[You’re a complete child.]**

“On your left!”

A swish of air and the sound of a fast moving object zipped by his ear. The man who’d been rounding the opposite corner, weapon drawn, dropped instantly like a sack of potatoes.

The man that Deadpool had been slashing at dropped just a second later, adding to their small pile.

“Aw, Hawkie,” Deadpool turned to gush as he wiped bad guy blood off the knife he’d just used along his thigh. “You really _do_ care!”

“Don’t call me that,” Hawkeye griped, clearly fed up with the constant nicknames Deadpool endlessly spewed. “And I don’t feel like wearing you as a human backpack, alright? If you die, you’re regenerating alone and I’m continuing on to find Spider-Man on my own.”

 _{He wants to steal our glory!}_ Yellow yelled indignantly.

 **[Glory?]** White’s deeper voice scoffed. **[What glory?]**

“The glory I’ll get from Spider-Man,” Deadpool supplied, his mind conjuring up the image of the kidnapped superhero draping himself into Deadpool’s waiting arms, thankful and immensely relieved to be rescued. “No way, circus freak, that hero worship is _all mine._ ”

Hawkeye laughed, and if he was going to say anything it was stopped by fast paced footsteps. Another round of security guards rounded the corner, and moved to surround the dynamic-duo.

“Now _that’s_ more like it! Last one to incapacitate these goons buys dinner,” Deadpool sang gleefully before throwing himself into the fray.

Hawkeye simply rolled his eyes, but notched another arrow eagerly. He _was_ getting sick of mess hall food, in all honesty, and Deadpool was loaded. Clint was about to have a date with the highest price steak one could find in New York, the kind that said “ _market price_ ” behind it, or, better yet, didn’t have prices listed _at all_.

“You’re on!” Hawkeye called out as he drew his arm back, focused and centered before he let it fly, only to look away, another arrow already notched, way before the first one even found it’s target. The gurgled cry from the goon, and the thud that followed, was enough to tell him he’d hit his intended mark.

He continued on.

The double kill gave the merc pause for a moment, dead center in the pandemonium, mouth gaping behind the stretch of his mask.

Hawkeye smirked as he let another arrow fly, this time aimed at a man creeping up behind Deadpool’s back.

“You better get those Benjamin's ready.”

The last man left was sent flying as Deadpool flipped him over his shoulder, executing a move with one of his katanas that had Hawkeye dodging a flying piece of viscera.

“Oh, _no, no, no,_ ” Deadpool crooned, sounding far from defeated, as the man finally fell to the floor. “We’re going plastic.”

He righted himself and turned back towards Hawkeye to proclaim smugly, “ _Amex, baby._ ”

Hawkeye raised his eyebrows sceptically. “What does someone loaded like you need a credit card for?”

“Reward points,” Deadpool finger gunned. “Six percent cash back, you can’t beat that!”

“Plus,” Deadpool nudged one of the men aside with his foot nonchalantly before he continued on, Hawkeye falling a few steps behind as he attempted to dodge the giant spread of blood puddles, “that thing could double as a weapon in sticky situations. I’ve severed several extremities with that bad boy. Never leave home without it.” He patted a small compartment on his belt fondly.

Clint found most of his accommodations and needs met through Shield, and as such had no credit card. Using it as a weapon... Leave it to Deadpool.

“We might have to wait for that celebratory din-din, though,” Deadpool informed regretfully as he peeked around a corner before giving the all clear. They delved deeper into the facility without pretense, no one in sight. The only sound was the buzz of the overhead lighting which contrasted with the sound of their echoing footsteps along the cement floor, and, of course, Deadpool’s motor-mouth.

“Our little spider will definitely need some nourishment and a pick-me-up after being kidnapped—” the merc droned on before his speech suddenly paused, drawing in a quick inhale. Hawkeye, being the expert at picking up minute movements that he was, noticed the sudden tension that spread across Deadpool’s hunched shoulders.

“You’re right,” Wade conceded quietly to someone Hawkeye couldn’t hear, most likely one of the mercs infamous voices, “I gotta make up for not being there.”

Hawkeye opened his mouth to interject when Deadpool glanced sideways at him and quickly interrupted, “so, I hope you don’t mind one more! Wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression. I like arachnids, not birds of prey, _capiche_?”

All sympathy Hawkeye had felt for the man a moment ago evaporated, dried up like a worm left on the sidewalk on a hot summer day, leaving only exasperation in its wake. “Believe me, we all know your one true love is Spider-Man.”

Hawkeye adjusted the strap along his chest, his ribs burning with a dull ache after that last round of ass-kicking, and he just hoped his comment didn’t fuel one of Deadpool’s infamous _‘ode’s to his undying love’_ for the spandexed hero. He was not in the mood; ribs aching, tired as hell, and already gearing up for the tremendous ass-reaming reprimand Cap was going to give him after he saw the bloody mess they’d left behind.

Luckily for Clint, Deadpool, for all that he loved talking about his love for Spider-Man, was too busy dealing with the worked up voices in his mind to start discussing his crush in length outloud.

 _{Ohhh, maybe we can wake him with true love’s kiss!}_ Yellow shouted, his overly-excited voice rattling around in Deadpool’s skull like loose pennies in a jar.

White scoffed at the other’s excitement. **[Don’t be daft, this isn’t Cinderella.]**

_{Ha, you idiot! That’s not Cinderella, it’s Snow White!}_

“No,” Deadpool argued, getting sucked into the argument within his own mind, “It’s Shrek!”

Hawkeye threw the man a look, but remained silent, more than aware that that particular response was not directed at him even if it _did_ sound like he was proclaiming his love to an animated swamp ogre.

_[Our life is not some Disney movie!]_

“Spoil-sport,” grumped Deadpool. Then after a few beats of silence, “Shrek was DreamWorks, by the way.”

Deadpool giggled gleefully at the frustrated yell White gave inside his head.

Hawkeye just shook his head at the maniac merc beside him and minded his own business, as was best to do when Deadpool found himself stuck in his own head.

“—you _idiots_!” a sudden voice echoed out.

Hawkeye’s gaze cut to Deadpool. The white’s of the mercs mask narrowed as he slowly brought a gloved finger to his lips in a signal to be quiet. Hawkeye rolled his eyes at the motion, as if _he_ was the one who needed to be quiet, _really?_ The mercs black and red leathered hand waved Clint forward.

That angry voice hadn’t sounded far away.

They crept silently along the corridor up until there was a bend. Once again, Deadpool leaned around the corner, and seeing nothing, the merc gave a thumbs up. The hallway ended with two large swinging double doors, and as they crept closer the conversation became easier to make out.

“Boss,” a male voice groveled, “we didn’t—”

“How could you let them get down here?!” The same reproachful voice from earlier interrupted. “We’re _this close_. You had _one fucking job_. Do you know how long we’ve been waiting for this moment? I thought I hired _trained security_. I won’t have our years-long plan squandered by the incapabilities of what turned out to be two mall cop wannabes!”

Deadpool clearly couldn’t hold in his snicker. Hawkeye threw him a sharp look.

“Listen, we’re—” a defensive female voice piped up this time, but was at once interrupted.

“What you’re going to do,” the commanding voice was lower now, as if hissed between clenched teeth, “is make sure they don’t make it _here_ , do you understand me? I’m transferring authority over to Johnson, since I clearly can’t rely on you two. Have his team—”

“We, uh, haven’t been able to reach them,” the quivering male voice was back as he informed his boss of the news fearfully.

“ _What._ ”

“Well, we, uh, we were—”

“ _What he means to say,_ ” the female voice cut in bitingly over her partners, “is we were scouting the outside perimeter when we realized we’d been breached. We radioed Johnson to check it out, as he was the closest, but since his 10-4 it’s been nothing but silence on his end.”

A deep, nose clenching sigh.

“So you’re telling me they could very possibly, _very nearly_ , be here by now?”

Deadpool turned his grin over towards Hawkeye, who nodded in return, adjusting his bow to silently notch an arrow. Seemed like as good a time as any to make their entrance.

The two guards must have nodded in affirmation to the question they’d been asked because there hadn’t even been a reply before the voice suddenly rose in decibels, nearly screaming in disbelief, “ _and you’re just standing in front of me instead of doing something about it!?_ ”

Deadpool quietly sheathed his knife and palmed his guns. One in each hand, and a bullet for each person in there who had dared to take his friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He’d heard enough. His blood boiled as he heard them talk about their plan; the fact they’d clearly been waiting years for this to all to go down only made him want to tear them apart even more.

Deadpool lifted out of his crouch and with more force than necessary kicked the doors open. They flew inward, reverberating against the walls with a loud crack and stayed put, as if not daring to swing back towards the destructive force that had wretched them open.

Masked eyes scanned the scene in front of them, looking for someone in need of rescue, but insead, five people turned in alarm to see themselves at gun-and-arrowpoint.

“Fuck,” the woman who’d spoke earlier cursed, scrambling for her gun. She never made it. Deadpool barely moved. The shot he’d taken rang loud in the room, hitting his desired target perfectly, and the drop of her body was even louder as it hit the ground in a dead slump.

“Any more takers?” the merc taunted in a voice that sounded deadlier than his own moniker.

The last security guard shook his head, took a step back, arms raised, terrified.

“ _You spineless good for nothing!_ ” the seething familiar voice spat as he reached for the gun at the surrendering man’s belt.

This time, Deadpool didn’t have enough time to pull the trigger before an arrow whizzed by, stopping the man mid-grab. The momentum of it caused the man in front of them to reel back. He screamed in agony as he fell to the ground, his hand coming up to the protrusion through his shoulder. Red spread along the white of his pristine lab coat.

Two additional people cowered as the scene unfolded in front of them, a man and a woman equally adorned in lab coats. Deadpool’s eyes flickered to the taller of the two, and his buzzed head reminded him of—

_“Mr. Wilson, my name's Ajax.” God the shine of that fucking light was bright in his eyes. “I manage this workshop.”_

Deadpool shook himself out of the flashback.

That’s all it was. Just a memory. They couldn't hurt him anymore, it was in the past.

 _{The hurt they did to us never ends.}_ Yellow reminded him with a pitiful whimper.

“Just a memory,” Deadpool repeated in a murmur, out loud this time to reassure not only Yellow, but himself. He tightened his grip on his guns and cleared his throat.

“Where’s Spider-Man?” he demanded in a louder voice, knowing Webs wasn’t being kept in this room just furthered his agitation. He felt like it was taking way too long to get to the _rescue_ part of this rescue mission.

“D-don’t!” The man now friendly with an arrow gasped between harsh breaths of pain. “Don’t tell them!”

In two great steps Deadpool was towering over the man whimpering on the floor. He lifted his leg and kicked out nastily, boot connecting with a sickeningly crack to his blood-soaked chest. The man yelped as he went sprawling along his back across the rough cement. Deadpool found the perfect spot next to the arrow and _pressed_ , pushing down along the shoulder blade under his thick-soled boot with unnecessary strength.

The man howled as the arrowhead pressed along the floor causing the shaft to slide up through his shoulder.

A gun was trained inches away from his clammy forehead.

“This will feel like nothing,” Deadpool threatened, “compared to what I’ll do to you if you don’t tell me where he is.”

The man shook his head, glancing over at the other two. The woman was openly crying now, tears streaking mascara down her face in black rivlets—

_{Definitely a waterproof kind of day!}_

—while the man next to her looked paler than their white lab coats.

Deadpool ground his heel harder into the shoulder beneath him as he crouched lower, masked face hovering inches from the quivering man’s.

“I don’t think you understand,” Deadpool’s voice was pitched low, as if he was sharing a whispered secret, “just what I’m willing to do to get him back. This little toothpick in your shoulder is nothing compared to the full on shish kabob I’m imagining you as.”

Deadpool paused for a moment, letting that information sink. “Now, you’re on borrowed patience, because I don’t have any.”

He let the muzzle of his gun finally connect to slick, sweaty skin. “So, if you don’t want to end up like little Miss Mall Cop over there, I suggest you tell me where I can find him.”

The man’s terrified gulp was deafening in the otherwise silent room, heard even over the women’s soft cries. But louder yet seemed to be the slide of Deadpool’s gloved finger as it made its way to the trigger. The man’s eyes followed its path, shutting just as Deadpool started to press down—

The man gave a minute, trembled nod. The woman released a hitched, relieved sob before throwing herself over to the rightmost wall. Hawkeye’s arrow stayed trained on her as she moved. There didn’t seem to be anything visible on the wall, just plain white-painted brick. But when she reached out to it instead of colliding with it, her hand went _through_. She laid it there for a moment, wrist deep in the fake wall, before it disappeared in a blink and in its place stood the same steel doors as the one’s Deadpool had shot open.

These doors slid open a lot smoother, however.

“Wise choice,” Deadpool patted the man’s cheek none-too-gently.

“ _Deadpool!_ ” came a deep, commanding voice behind him and Deadpool facepalmed with his gun still in hand, whipping around to see Captain Horrible Timing, Stark, and a few others from their entourage march through the doors he’d broken.

The man gave a whimper of relief beneath him and Deadpool turned back to glare down at him.

“You couldn’t have just been a little quicker, could ya? Now we all gotta deal with Captain Lecture. Thanks, my guy.”

Deadpool shoved off the shoulder he’d been leaning weight on, using it to stand upright, ignoring the man's pained cry. He’d need his full height advantage (he was just a smidge taller than Captain America himself, which gave him immense satisfaction even in its marginality) for the oncoming, predictable berating speech.

_{Blah blah, follow my orders.}_

**[Yadda, yadda, don’t kill.]**

“What _exactly_ did you two think you were doing?” Rogers asked them in a rage, but marched up to Deadpool.

Deadpool bristled at the superiority in his voice. Hawkeye wisely stayed silent.

“What you don’t have the balls to do,” Deadpool bluntly answered him, and he noticed Hawkeye’s slight wince behind the Captain’s shoulder out of the corner of his eye.

Rogers’ eyes narrowed, face reddening in anger and, perhaps just a tad, embarrassment.

Deadpool smirked.

“I don’t have to kill everyone in my path like _you, Wade,_ in order to get the job done,” Rogers argued back through clenched teeth. “It takes a lot more to strategize and minimize causal—”

“I don’t give a _fuck_ about minimizing! I’d blow the world up to find Spider-Man,” Deadpool cut in, perhaps a little too telling, but fuck it. These yucks wouldn’t have done _shit_ if he hadn’t even told them.

“You guys didn’t even realize he was missing,” he accused, “and when _I_ finally told you, you did nothing!”

“We made sure we had _accurate inte_ l instead of wasting time on dead-end leads, because that was the best course of action!” Rogers countered, stern voice raising. “You can’t just go k—”

“Don’t go telling me what I _can’t do_ ,” Deadpool hissed. “I’m not one of your minions, _Captain_ , bowing down to you because you’ve been coined for inventing patriotism.”

Rogers huffed out a sharp, angry exhale through his nose.

Deadpool sneered, “I don’t know if you’re just slow on the uptake from that long ice bath you took but, _reality check_ , no one’s proud of America at the moment except—”

“ _Guys!_ ” Stark’s impatient voice cut through their growing argument, voice carrying from the side room the women had opened. “We have more important shit to deal with right now, or did you forget who we’re here for? _Get the fuck in here._ ”

Deadpool’s bite left him instantly as realization washed over him like a tidal wave. He barely registered Rogers barking orders to the remaining men as he practically ran through the now-revealed doorway.

As he entered, Deadpool's eyes scanned the area, looking for someone he knew he’d recognize despite the fact he’d never laid eyes on them unmasked. The room was huge, accentuated by the fact it was almost completely unoccupied. It was empty and chilling, and something about it gave him the major creeps. Now that he was directly in the room, Deadpool could hear the whirl and hum of machinery, and the telling, echoing blip of a heart monitor. His own heart lurched.

A heart monitor. Which meant—

Deadpool eyes honed into the farthest corner of the room, where Stark was already hovering. There laid out in a standard hospital gown and strapped to a metal contraption was—

_Spider-Man._

Deadpool soft steps managed to echo in the cavernous room as he slowly drew closer to stand beside Stark. The relief he felt at finally laying eyes on an _alive_ Spider-Man was immense and all encompassing; but he also felt a pang of regret, and his eyes spasmed as they shifted swiftly, gaze downdrawn to the floor. He wanted to look his fill, but the guilt of learning the man’s protected identity this way felt wrong.

Deadpool hadn’t earned this right...

Deadpool wasn’t even sure he _deserved_ to know, to look.

“ _Peter,_ ” Stark breathed out, seeming to be in shock at the sight of the unconscious man in front of them. Deadpool watched as he took a step closer and reached out a shaky tan hand to lay upon a paler one.

_{Peter.}_

**[That wasn’t the name we were expecting…]**

“But it’s perfect,” Deadpool whispered quietly to himself. He mouthed the name, getting the feel for what it might sound like from his own, wanting to say it but not letting it fall from his lips.

Peter.

His eyes glanced up on their own accord before quickly dropping back down, but not before he caught a glimpse of soft, disheveled brown curls.

Stark sniffed for a moment before turning to inspect the various and abundant computers spread about _Peter’s_ bedside.

Deadpool stayed put, fighting a war within himself.

 _{I want to seeeee him.}_ Yellow whined. _{We may never get another chance!}_

 **[He doesn’t need to know we looked.]** White reasoned, but even his voice wavered with hesitance.

Spider-Man’s, no, Peter’s, friendship meant more to Wade than anything. There wasn’t much good in his life these days and Peter had befriended him when he was at his worst. Even amongst the quite adamant advice of his other superhero friends to stay far, far away from Deadpool’s crazy, homicidal ass, Peter stayed close.

If he hadn’t been vouched for by Spider-Man he probably never would have landed the Shield gig in the first place. He would still be sifting through neverending gold cards, slumming it at Sissy Marg’s, dodging the advances of the X-Men, all the while looking for purpose in his life at the end of bloody katana’s and rising body counts. Looking for a way to wash away the bloody, shitty life he’d been dealt from the bottom of dirty, chipped shot glasses.

Not that he still didn’t do both those things, but since meeting Peter, those days were spread farther and fewer between. Alcohol did nothing for him, anyway, and he’d gotten better at limiting the bloodshed.

Well, up until recently that is.

Spider-Man had been teaching him a little something called _restraint_.

Now, Wade was contracted through Shield for his bloodshed and all thanks were due to one little spider for landing him the job. Deadpool really didn’t want to break the trust he’d worked so hard to build.

So, Deadpool stood back, eyes glued on the floor, as he focused on making sure his peepers didn’t, ya’ know, _peep_.

“What is this, Tony?” Rogers asked as he joined them. The question carried across the room to hang ominously in the air around them.

Hawkeye’s familiar beat up combat boots stepped into Deadpool’s vision, stopping beside him. He didn’t do anything so forward as reach out to touch the merc, but his presence was just as comforting. It gave him something to look at beyond the cracked cement floor, at least, and he wondered if it would be inappropriate to let Hawkeye know one of his boot’s laces had come untied.

Stark let out a sigh that didn’t sound promising.

“From what I can tell…” Stark paused, clicks and clacks reverberating loudly in the room as he pecked away at a keyboard.

“It looks like B.A.R.F,” he finally said, still typing away.

Deadpool couldn’t help the giggle that escaped, shoulders shaking.

“Maybe they couldn’t afford Stark tech,” Deadpool joked. Hawkeye huffed out a tiny breath of laughter beside him.

“Not _vomit_ , you literal child,” Stark snapped. “B.A.R.F, Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing. It was a program Quentin Beck, Mysterio, created while he was on my team. But this… this is that program on _steroids_.”

His hands remained on the keyboard in front of him as he turned to look back at them.

“We only cleared B.A.R.F for therapeutic purposes,” he explained. “But when Peter—uh, shit.”

Stark’s eyes flickered guiltily to Deadpool as he muttered, “Cat’s out of the bag now, I guess, can’t stuff it back in. We’ll deal with _that_ later,” then continued on.

“When Peter faced Mysterio in Venice he used a modified version of it to create realistic holograms to create terrorizing monsters. This, though,” Stark shook his head, turning back around to type at a ridiculous pace.

Deadpool let his gaze lift to Hawkeye, who’s concerned eyes were trained on Peter lying before them. He wondered if Hawkeye was seeing the hero for the first time too, or if Deadpool was the only one in the room not privy to Spider-Man’s true identity.

The thought stung.

“This… this is more intune with the original programming, although instead of using it to signal the memories outward, like a projection, it sifts through them internally and stores them as binary code,” the billionaire’s voice sounded a bit breathy, awed, like he was unearthing an amazing discovery. “This allows them to not only _download_ said memories, but to experience them in real time _inside_ the mind.”

“What,” Hawkeye’s voice piped up from beside him, “like _The Matrix_?”

_{Oh, we love that movie!}_

**[Only because you have a boner for Keanu Reeves.]**

_{Who wouldn’t!?}_

Stark snorted. “Not quite, Wachowski. It doesn’t simulate anything, it just— Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure, I’d need—”

He cut himself off and his gaze settled on the Captain before Stark instructed him to bring in the scientists. “There’s parts of this I can’t seem to break through.” It sounded like it pained him to admit, “I need them.”

“On it!” Deadpool announced, needing to leave the room as it was getting hard to not let his gaze settle on Spidey, no, _Peter’s_ , frame. No doubt the hero was gorgeous, and he’d been dreaming of what was under the suit for a while now. It was like dangling a crisp cool bottle of Fiji water to a parched man in the sahara. Wade, practically dying of this thirst for ages, teetered on the edge of self-control on even the best of days. His eyes wanted to gobble up the image of the unmasked man laying before him while he had the chance, afraid he wouldn’t get it again, so his mind could replay it tortuously for the rest of his unending days.

No, Wade wouldn’t allow himself.

He stalked out of the room, the white eyes of his mask honing in on the cowering figures in lab coats. He bent down to wrap a hand around the collar of the bleeding scientist, and his other blood-coated glove pointed to the remaining two scientists to usher them into the room.

“Go,” he ordered with a bark, “now.”

The shaking security guard sighed in relief, his body slumping down along the wall he was leaning against. The two scientists trembled in fear over the precarious situation they had now landed in, yet obeyed Deadpool’s order silently, afraid of the consequence of their disobedience at the hands of the clearly unstable merc.

Deadpool’s gloved hand curled around the skewered scientist’s collar, and he dragged him forcibly over to Stark. The man moaned in pain as the motion jostled his shoulder. His pallor could have matched his once-white lab coat, and his eyes rolled, half delirious from blood loss, but that seemed like a personal problem to Deadpool, who couldn’t care less.

Rogers crossed his arms and settled that disapproving stare on him as he watched the man slide roughly across the floor. Deadpool sneered at the Star-Spangled Asshat as he passed, then dumped the man at Stark’s feet. He bent down low over the man, nose to nose.

“Remember what I told you before?” Deadpool threatened menacingly, the white eyes of his mask narrowed down at the man like slits.

The man nodded rapidly.

“ _Good_.”

Deadpool patted the injured man on the head once, using it for leverage as he stood back up, but instead of taking his post back by Hawkeye, decided to settle himself _behind_ the tempting, unconscious, unmasked Spider-Man. He let his eyes follow the cords and wires leading behind Peter, and allowed himself to investigate, if only to keep himself occupied.

Stark took one look at the bleeding-out scientist and shot Deadpool a scathing look. His gaze quickly changed focus, however, as it wandered over to the conscious scientists as he questioned, “Which one of you is in charge?”

The man nodded his chin toward the other man on the floor as the women pointed in the same direction.

Deadpool only half listened to whatever boring science mumbo-jumbo they were spewing, as his eyes tracked an unusually thick, peculiar cord that ran from the computer, along the ground and up the back of the contraption Spider-Man was strapped into. _Huh, wonder what that does?_

“I was afraid of that,” Stark sighed heavily. “Alright, how much knowledge of the program do you two have?”

“Well,” the young man responded sardonically, “we only helped design it, implement it, and have been running it since it’s completion, but what would we know?”

The woman besides him murmured something sharply under her breath but he shook his head, gaze steely in defiance.

It was clear getting answers out of him wasn’t going to be easy.

Deadpool was tall enough to see over the lip of the ledge of the reclined contraption; no one seemed to be paying any attention to him, all the focus on the two scientists before them. He hunched down, and noticed a notch in the metal framing of the contraption. From it, Deadpool could take a peek at Spider-Man’s soft, delicate neck. Protruding from his nape was a large, metal cord, the same one Deadpool had followed from the computer.

**[Hawkeye wasn’t far off with that Matrix comment…]**

Even White’s usual snide voice sounded deep with concern.

 _{I don’t like this…}_ Yellow whimpered. _{Let’s get him out of it!}_

This was too similar to experimentation, in _his_ opinion, and Deadpool wanted Spidey out of it ASAP.

“Now's not the time for sarcasm, young man,” Rogers warned, arms crossed. “I suggest you answer the questions. If you comply, I promise you’ll both get out of here safely.”

The man just snorted.

“Jake,” the women beside him hissed. “ _Stop_.”

Stark’s eyes went to her and he beckoned her, “Come here.”

“No,” the man stepped in front of her quickly. “I have more knowledge of the overall program, I’ll help.”

He made his way over to Stark as he explained, “There isn’t much I can do. We sent him further into a session just before we realized you’d gotten in.”

Deadpool looked up at that information, what he’d been fascinated with in front of him dropping away at the man’s words.

“What does that mean?” Deadpool asked before anyone else could, stepping back around to Stark and Jake the scientist.

Jake hesitated, eyeing Deadpool’s considerable bulk, and likely his various weapons, as he came nearer.

“We—” his voice cracked, and he swallowed before he continued, “we’ve never sent him this deep before in search for memories, and we, well, we didn’t exactly plan to extract him from it, so—”

“So what you’re telling us,” Stark drawled in that very arrogant I-get-exactly-what-you’re-saying-because-I’m-smarter-than-you voice of his, “is that you have _no idea_ how to get Peter out of this thing?”

The man shook his head rapidly, hands coming up defensively. “No! No, he _can_ come out of it. Safely, however, is a different story. We created this from a scientists perspective,” he told them, glancing at Deadpool beside him nervously, as if he’d react negatively to this next part, “but not the users. P-Peter doesn’t know _how_ to come up and out of the danger zone, the deepest memories, and we can’t relay that information to him.”

Deadpool didn’t quite see what the problem was.

“Why can’t we just power down the machine and take him off it? Surely he’ll wake up on his own,” he stated, glancing over to Stark for confirmation.

But Stark pursed his lips and wouldn’t meet his gaze, eyes still focused on the computers. The look pinching his face wasn’t reassuring.

“If you take him out now, he might never wake up,” Jake explained. “He’s too far in.”

Deadpool scoffed. “From memories? Isn’t this like sleep? Eventually he’ll wake up.”

“It’s not like that,” the scientist protested. “The mind is a personal labyrinth and being stuck in it with no guide could very well leave him in a coma or—”

Deadpool raised an eyebrow, crossed arms bulging. “Or?”

Jake gulped, but remained quiet.

The air around them had turned glum and sour, on top of the already glum and sourness of this whole expedition, while an unconscious, un-knowing Spider-Man dreamt on besides them. Whatever excitement Deadpool had been feeling at finding the man was slowly turning into a buzzkill sundae as this discussion continued on.

“Come on,” Deadpool laughed, looking around at them. “You can’t expect me to believe _the bad guys_. Of course they’ll tell you it’s a no-go. They were going to leave him on this thing to rot regardless.”

Deadpool swung back around to where he’d been inspecting the cord exiting from Peter’s neck.

“I found this,” Deadpool waved Stark over. He reached out, fingers grazing the side of Peter’s soft-looking neck where the rest of them couldn’t see. “What if we took it out? It would be like unplugging a computer right? Maybe if we put it back in, he’d be right back in the program where he could come out safely. Like a reboot.”

Stark had come to investigate over his shoulder. “Hands to yourself,” he hissed when he noticed the gloved hand that had moved to touch the cord extending from Peter’s neck.

Deadpool snatched his hand away as if he’d been burnt.

“Listen,” Stark spoke, softer this time. “I get you want to rescue him. We all do. But, while insanity might be _your_ signature, I bet Peter wouldn’t be thrilled.”

Deadpool paused.

“You mean he could go insane?”

Stark shrugged, gaze focused on the port attached to Peter. “It’s very possible. The cerebral cortex is an amazing, beautiful, finicky _bitch_. He could come out of it just fine, but in all likelihood…”

He looked up at Deadpool. “He needs an anchor to come back up safely. They’ve shoved him deep into the recesses of the hippocampus searching for memories, some that might even be subconsciously repressed. This transcends simple computer technology, Deadpool, and flirts dangerously with the intricacies of the temporal lobe. We can’t just take him out if the likelihood of him not coming out safely is there.”

Then Tony delivered the final blow, “You know full well the horrors of being stuck in your own mind.”

_{We don’t want a crazy Spider-Man!}_

Deadpool would love him all the same, but still. He was perfect and should remain perfect. So, that meant…

“You mentioned an anchor. So, why can’t one of us guide him out? We know what’s going on, he doesn’t. It would help, wouldn’t it?”

Deadpool looked over at the scientists, questioning eyes aimed at them.

Jake squirmed under Deadpool’s scrutinous gaze.

It was the women who spoke up instead.

“The surgery to implant the connection port was lengthy, we had to be careful and cautious as to not...” she trailed off, eyes glancing at Peter before sliding away.

“Kill him?” Rogers piped up, and even he started to grow an agitated look upon his face.

She gave a single nod. “Not only that, but we only assisted the surgery. Unfortunately, Dr. Riva was the one who led it.”

They looked down at the passed out, wounded man on the floor in front of them.

“You can’t tell me it’s just you three leading this thing,” Hawkeye sounded skeptical.

“It’s not!” She defended. “But Dr. Riva didn’t want any of our other members aware of the location for safety’s sake. We wanted to minimize the information getting leaked. A lot of them worked on the programming, but none of them could help in the actual implementation of the device.”

“But you still helped,” Rogers walked up to her, using that authoritative look that made you want to give up your secrets, “so you could perform it again if you had to, couldn’t you?”

“I, well, I guess—” she stuttered.

“Mariah,” Jake cut her off abruptly before addressing the group. “Look, we can’t safely perform this on any of you. The odds of you flatlining are astronomical, we’re talking _brain surgery_ here. We know what position we’re in right now, but we’re not risking any more wrath upon us by killing one of you.”

 **[But they had no problem risking Spider-Man!]** White growled.

Deadpool was just about to growl the same exact thing when what Jake said registered with him.

“Wait,” Deadpool flapped a hand around as if to bat away the information they’d been given. “So you’re only unwilling to do it because one of us could die? Not because you can’t do it.”

“Yes,” Jake responded through clenched teeth. “But performing it _so you survive_ is kind of the point, isn’t it?”

Deadpool smirked, and his eyes met Hawkeye’s, who had a small, growing smile on his face.

“ _Put me in coach!_ ”


	2. A Spider Found

The last thing Deadpool remembered was being prepped for a makeshift surgery upon an old ping-pong table they’d dragged into the room, apparently left behind in the days before it was used for a super secret bad guy hide out. There had been pain, pain, _pain_ , and then blissful nothingness.

Now there was white _everywhere_.

_{Is this heaven?!}_

**[You idiot, we’re not going anywhere** near **heaven.]**

“Boys, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Deadpool muttered, unnerved by the quiet and the brightness and the complete emptiness that seemed to both envelope them and not. It was a weird feeling, and he figured he must be inside the machine, because a little addling of his brains definitely wasn’t going to knock him out for the count.

Plus, he certainly didn’t expect any pearly white gates, or God’s awaiting, open arms.

 _Remember,_ Mariah had reminded him in a hushed, timid voice before the surgery, _the more recent the memories, the closer you are to us being able to get you both out_.

Deadpool wasn’t looking forward to seeing just how far deep in Peter was, but if he was the only one who could rescue their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, he’d go through his past hell and back to do it.

He did an ungraceful spin, looking for an indication on which way to go, but nothing but white stretched on. He closed his eyes and spun again, finger outstretched in a point. When he stopped he opened his eyes and walked in that direction, hoping he was making the right choice but not knowing what other one he could possibly make.

They hadn’t given him an instruction manual for this thing, so he kept thoughts of Spider-Man in his head, hoping it would act as a sort of beacon, guiding him to the man currently on his mind.

Deadpool walked.

And walked. And walked.

And walked some more.

He walked so long he started up a conversation with the boxes, something he didn’t often do outside _bad days_. He’d comment back to them here or there, but to have full on discussions was rare, and usually ended in them antagonizing him enough to reach for a firearm. But one could only walk in silence so long before it became deafening and even the sound of his own voices was better than nothing.

 _{You don’t get it!}_ cried Yellow as they teased him.

White scoffed _._ **[** **Your obsession with it is worrisome.]**

“Far be it from us to judge Yellow’s personal proclivities,” Deadpool snickered.

White’s mocking voice echoed in his mind but Deadpool shushed him as he saw a door in the horizon.

“Do you think that’s it?”

**[Well, only way to find out.]**

_{But what if it’s one of_ our _memories?}_

Deadpool drew himself up as he approached the door, steeling himself. “Then we deal with it like we always do.”

 **[You mean by** **_not_ ** **dealing with it?]**

_{You mean by unaliving ourselves?}_

Deadpool ignored them and wrapped a gloved hand around the door handle, turning it and pulling it towards him. The door inched open slowly and when Deadpool stepped inside he was confronted by a hospital scene.

It didn’t look like anything _he_ remembered, but then again there was a lot Deadpool had taken great lengths to forget. His eyes scanned the room and he froze as he saw someone sitting beside an older woman lying in a hospital bed.

The color of that curly hair looked familiar, but the side profile was new. Deadpool had tried _so hard_ not to gaze upon Spider-Man’s unmasked face, and now here it was taunting him. For some reason he’d been expecting a suited up Spider-Man during this part, not an unmasked Peter.

Deadpool wasn’t sure if this was a memory he’d intruded upon, or real Spider-Man, but he couldn’t stop watching regardless. The man was clasping the woman's hand and just staring at her, and Deadpool was mesmerised.

 _{He’s so pretty_.}

“He’s gorgeous,” Deadpool responded aloud, and the man’s head whipped up.

“Deadpool?!”

Deadpool would have given an awkward wave, but he was too busy taking in the free, unmasked face in front of him. He realized what he was doing and abruptly spun around.

“It’s a long story involving bad guys and The Matrix and surgery, but I’m here to rescue you,” he explained rapidly, his back to Peter. “I tried not to look when I saw you, baby boy, I really did. Maybe they can figure out a way to remove that particular pesky memo—”

A hand grasped his shoulder and then, “It’s alright, Deadpool. You can look.”

Deadpool didn’t turn around. “I don’t want you to reveal yourself if you’re not ready.”

What he meant was, _if you don’t trust me_.

Peter huffed a laugh, and it sounded exactly like the one he’d heard a hundred times before when they were on patrol together, and it put Deadpool a little more at ease.

“Well, I think extenuating circumstances took care of that, but honestly, it’s okay, Deadpool. You gotta help us get out of here, I’m much more worried about that at the moment.”

Deadpool reluctantly turned around to face the deepest, kindest set of eyes he’d ever seen.

He recognized that chin, and had dreamt about those pink, tempting lips, but they led up to an unfamiliar adorable, straight nose, beautiful brown eyes, and lovely curly dark hair. He nearly swooned, but then remembered _he_ was supposed to be the hero in this story and hero’s don’t swoon.

“Mystero’s old crew is trying to figure out your super powers,” Deadpool explained, unable to break his gaze from the beautiful sight in front of him, “using memories with some barf machine, or something.”

Peter’s lips ticked up into a half smile, the kind Deadpool had learned meant he was trying not to laugh at something he found funny.

“I’m somewhat familiar,” Peter told him, “but not in this capacity.”

Brown curls bounced as he looked around the room, then back to the women laying still on the bed.

“It was similar technology they used on me back in highschool, when Mysterio and his crew came after me the first time.”

Peter looked back to Deadpool. Or rather, _up_. He seemed so much _less_ in civilian clothes, and yet somehow so much more at the same time. Spidey also seemed to be a touch shorter outside the suit, but Deadpool didn’t mind the difference, especially when the pay off meant he got to look down into those expressive, sparkling brown eyes.

“So,” Peter declared in his Spider-Man _let’s get down to business_ voice, “how do we make it out of here? I’ve been trying to figure it out but it’s taken most of my energy to direct them away from memories I don’t want seen.”

“How’d you manage that?”

Peter flushed a little. “I’m not entirely sure, actually. I haven’t always been successful. Sometimes I ignore the doors but others won’t appear unless I go through them,” he shrugged. “I somehow managed to recall this memory and just refused to leave after it played out. But I’m not entirely sure I can do it again,” he looked down and bit his lip.

“Well, Stark and Co are out there—” Deadpool gestured upward towards the ceiling.

“Tony’s here?” The tinge of excitement in Peter’s voice at hearing the man’s name was _almost_ adorable. Wade silently cursed Stark to the boxes.

“Of course,” Deadpool said, “only the best for you, Spidey. When I noticed you weren’t texting me back I went straight to Stark to gather the cavalry.”

Deadpool, not used to these new facial expressions on Spidey’s unmasked face, wasn’t sure how to read the look Peter gave.

“You noticed I was missing?”

Deadpool laughed. “Of _course_. We’re besties. You always answer my text messages, no matter how annoying.”

“They’re not annoying,” Peter defended. After a slight pause, he added, “Thanks, Deadpool.”

Deadpool nudged Peter’s shoulder and made sure that his fingers didn’t linger too long like they wished to... “Don’t mention it. You’d do the same for any of us.”

Peter grasped Deadpool's hand before it completely slipped away and _squeezed._ “I’d do the same for _you.”_

_{Holy smokes Batman, he’s totally into us!}_

Deadpool just chuckled nervously at the hand squeeze and Yellow’s comment, and used the hand Peter released to scratch at the back of his head.

“Anyway, Stark’s up there—“ he made a keyboard typing motion, “—and they’re keeping an eye on us until they can safely get us out. The more recent the memories, the closer we are to that point, or so it goes. So, onward! Let’s get this over with. I like to leave the past in the past.”

Peter nodded in agreement, but said, “some things are worth remembering,” before he made his way over to the sleeping woman's bedside and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Love you, Aunt May,” he whispered.

Deadpool pretended to fiddle with the closure of one of his pouches. He wasn’t used to displays of tenderness or closeness in relation to family. He didn’t know how to act and _certainly_ didn’t want to intrude on the scene before him.

But Peter didn’t seem bothered Deadpool had witnessed it. He didn’t linger, and once he righted himself he squeezed her hand one last time before he walked past Deadpool towards a door on the right of the wall. He nodded to it. “The doors we come through disappear, but they always reappear somewhere else as the exit.”

Deadpool hurried over as Peter exited through the doorway, but before Deadpool followed him through he looked back and said softly in farewell, “Bye, Aunt May.”

* * *

They walked on quietly through the endless white.

Deadpool had the constant chatter of his own thoughts, and the boxes, filling his head. Why had Spider-Man seemed so okay with him knowing his identity? Who was Aunt May, and had she ended up being okay? He looked over at Peter, who was walking besides him. His curly hair seems to bounce with each step, long overdue for a haircut.

“I know you want to ask,” Peter told him, amused, “so go ahead.”

Unable to stop himself, Deadpool let the question fall from his lips. “Who was that?”

“My Aunt May,” Peter told him softly. “She and my Uncle Ben raised me, after my parents died. They were pretty much the only family I had.”

Deadpool looked back, but the door they had left from was long gone.

“Did she…?”

“No,” Peter shook his head. “It was stage four breast cancer, and by the time we found out there wasn’t much we could do. She did a couple rounds of treatments but they made her feel so sick she ended up stopping. She always waited too long to get herself checked, but she was always doing that, putting people before herself. Putting _me_ before herself.”

He ran the back of a hand along his eyes.

“Anyway,” Peter continued on with a small, tired sigh, “she’s been gone for a while now. She passed during my second year of college. Which feels like a lifetime ago, now that I’m working on my masters.” He gave a tiny hiccuped laugh.

Deadpool had been aware Peter was a college student, but all he’d known was the vague details that he _went_. He had no idea for how long or for _what_.

 _{Ohh, he’s so smart!}_ Yellow gushed.

 **[Unlike you.]** White quipped drily.

Deadpool wasn’t sure if that was directed at Yellow, or him. Either way, he waved a hand to scatter the thoughts.

“If she raised you,” Deadpool told him, “she had to be one extraordinary lady.”

Peter chuckled at that, and glanced up at him. “She was, DP. She really was.”

Deadpool, lost in that hazel gaze, nearly ran into a door that suddenly appeared.

“Sonofa—,” he cursed into the vastness around them. “Could give a guy a little warning!”

Deadpool eyed the door. “Do you ever know what’s behind it before you open it?”

Peter shook his head. “No, unfortunately. That’s why I’ve been trying my hardest to avoid them, but I’ve already gone through a lot of my childhood years. So we’re probably bound to hit teenage Peter at some point.”

He bit his lip and glanced up at Deadpool. “That was around the time I got bit, and I wasn’t...”

Peter ran a hand through his curly hair, making it more dishelved than it already looked.

“I wasn’t always exactly a great superhero. I made a lot of mistakes. I mean, I still do. But I wasn’t—”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Deadpool interjected. “Whatever mistakes _you_ made, I probably did ten times worse on purpose.”

Peter looked down and huffed a humorless laugh. “Well, let’s just get through these doors and we’ll see about that.”

That was exactly what Deadpool was worried about.

Sure, he’d see Peter stumbling through becoming Spider-Man, but if any of _his_ memories were to be shown, would Peter still vouch for him and his character, for his changed ways, if he saw who Wade had _really_ been at one point?

Peter tugged the door open and Deadpool followed him in, feeling like a man about to walk the plank.

The door shut with finality behind him.

* * *

They were on a sidewalk between some buildings in Queens, not far off from where Spider-Man and Deadpool liked to patrol.

It was obviously night time, but for the sporadic dull brightness casting deep shadows from the few lampposts still left intact. Light reflected off the deep puddles along the road in a way that indicated it had been heavily raining at some point, but had now died down to a fine mist.

A familiar, yet perhaps higher pitched, laughter filled the streets.

“Woo!” echoed a much younger Spider-Man, and they turned to watch him flip off a lamppost down the road, only to land easily along the street and keep walking.

He looked like he could do anything, even in his makeshift Spider-Man suit, which looked like a sewing project gone slightly wrong.

Peter tensed beside him.

“What’s wrong?” Deadpool asked, looking from him to this youthful Spider-Man and back again. It was crazy how he looked exactly the same, and yet so different. There were subtle differences, like how tall he was, the width of his shoulders, his hair, and of course the expressions on their faces.

Memory-Spider-Man was elated.

 _His_ Spider-Man looked grim.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to relive this memory,” Peter muttered quietly. “I was trying hard not to have to.”

His head followed his younger self as he nearly skipped down the road, doing tricks and flips and sometimes crawling along the sides of the building besides him.

“We have to watch the memory play out until the door reveals itself,” Peter took a step towards himself, then turned back towards Deadpool. “Just… try to reserve judgment. Although, I probably deserve it.”

 **[Does he** know **our body count?]** White asked in disbelief.

 _{We’d never judge you Spider-Man!}_ Yellow crowed as if the man in question could hear him _, {you wouldn’t hurt a fly!}_

Deadpool followed Peter following himself (wasn’t _that_ just a head scratcher), and wondered just what exactly he could be judging himself so harshly for. Deadpool had seen and done a lot of things he wasn’t proud of, but he’d never stopped to beat himself up over them, he always _knew_ the world was better off without the people he unalived.

He couldn’t imagine Peter doing anything close to what _he’d_ done.

An alarm blared up ahead, and Spider-Man suddenly grabbed something from his hoodie pocket and fumbled it on. Deadpool held in his giggle at the face mask with goggles sewn into them. It made him recall his own original, horribly-crafted Deadpool costume. It hadn’t looked much better. Between the two of them, Peter was _totally_ better with a needle.

They followed him around the corner to a convenience store, where a faded red awning boasted the “best sandwiches in Queens”. A man was still there, shoveling money into what looked like a damn pillowcase, _yikes_.

 **[Baby’s first burglary.]** White mocked the thief, snickering.

 _{_ Our _baby’s first burglary,}_ Yellow repeated proudly as they watched a hesitant Spider-Man approach with much less bravado than his present self usually did.

Yellow wasn’t far off, though. Younger Peter stood there, waiting for the burglar to notice him. When it was clear he was too invested in his task, he finally cleared his throat.

The man jumped and spun around, but he didn’t brandish any weapons, thankfully. Even though it was a memory, Deadpool still felt uneasy about Spider-Man being all alone. He _was_ practically a baby.

“What were you doing out here all alone,” Deadpool leaned over to whisper in Peter’s ear accusingly. “You _definitely_ look like you had a bedtime.”

A hand swatted him away, but not before Deadpool eyed the slight shiver that went down Peter’s spine. “You don’t have to whisper, Deadpool. They can’t hear us. And I _wasn’t_ supposed to be out. Neither Aunt May or Uncle Ben knew where I was. I wish I _had_ been home. Maybe it would have changed something, _anything.”_

Deadpool drew his hairless eyebrows together in confusion, but let it be. He watched the scene play out in front of them.

“You scared me, kid,” the robber chastised distractedly, resuming snatching and stuffing things into his pillowcase. After he finished with the money in the register he moved onto grabbing cigarettes and other oddities found behind the counter. “You lost?”

Younger Peter didn’t answer.

“I ain’t got time for rugrats, ‘aight?” He dismissed with a wave of his hand after he noticed the kid hadn’t left. “ _Scram_.”

“I can’t do that, sir,” younger Peter countered bravely as he straightened himself to stand taller, his voice shaking just a bit, and Deadpool snickered at the _manners_.

Peter beside him didn’t look away from the scene unfolding yet perfectly found his weak spot, the tender skin in between his ribs that always equally ticked and _hurt_ when he dug his little spindly spider fingers in. Deadpool’s laughter faded out in a sharp wheeze.

“I’m pretty sure Mr. Delmar won’t appreciate your sticky fingers,” younger Peter attempted to quip to the unphased robber, who continued to pilfer cigarettes into his near-bursting pillowcase.

The Peter in front of them seemed undeterred by the man ignoring him. “That’s an awful lot of cigarettes you’re taking. You know those things can kill you, right?”

The man made an aggravated noise, his head snapping up. “Look, kid, this whole schtick is real cute, _love_ the get up, but seriously. _Get lost_. I’m not up for chit chat. Can’t you see I’m a little busy?” He resumed his rummaging as he asked, “Don’t you got parents looking for you?”

“Why don’t you just web this klepto up,” Deadpool frowned, wondering why Spider-Man hadn’t done something yet.

Peter shook his head. “I hadn’t designed my web fluid yet. I’d only recently acquired my powers, and was testing them out. I didn’t really know what I was doing… this was my first brush with fighting crime.”

Yellow’s cooing reverberated deep in his mind.

“ _Aw_ ,” Deadpool’s deep voice echoed Yellow’s. “We’re witnessing Spider-Man’s backstory?!”

Peter tensed before slowly letting his shoulders relax, shrugging nonchalantly at Deadpool’s question.

Deadpool’s frowned again, bothered. Spider-Man didn’t seem himself, distracted and oddly focused on what was going on in front of him. Despite him warning Deadpool about it, not much had happened. So far it didn’t look like anything Deadpool could ever be one to judge him for. Being bad at being a hero was pretty much Deadpool’s modus operandi, and at least Spidey had the excuse of being new at it.

Finally, clearly tired of being dismissed, younger Peter stepped over the threshold of the deli, broken glass crunching under his shoe. The man glanced up for a moment then quickly grabbed a few more things mindlessly before throwing the pillowcase over his shoulder, rounding around the counter to leave.

“Alright, kid,” the man’s voice oozed condescension and he clasped a hand on Peter’s shoulder as he passed, “you get home safe, now. And, just a bit of advice? Don’t let your mama make your halloween costumes anymore.”

As the man’s hand slipped from younger Peter’s shoulder, Peter reached out fast as lightning, twisting the man’s arm and yanking it in an unpleasant direction.

The man yelped. “Fuck—What— _Ow!”_

“Like I said, _sir_ , Mr. Delmar doesn’t appreciate sticky fingers. I’m sorry, but I can’t let you take that stuff,” Peter said matter-of-factly.

“Fuck you, kid,” the man struggled, but Peter’s grip was iron tight.

“Give me the pillowcase,” Peter ordered, the hand not gripping his arm held out expectantly.

“Fuck—You—Man,” he continued to struggle, yelping again as Peter urged his hand up higher in his hold.

The man suddenly stopped struggling. “Fine, here!” He swung the bag off his shoulder fast, and Peter let go of him in his surprise, reaching for it. His fingers closed around the bottom of it, but slipped, unable to gain a solid hold due to his gloved hands.

There was a sharp laugh and a “sucker!” as the man tugged the pillowcase out of Peter’s fingers, but it didn’t budge. Young Peter’s grip was just as strong and sticky as grown Peter’s was today, clearly, as all he had to do was yank _once_ and the bag was ripping, the contents falling noisily to the floor below.

Angered, but clearly worried he’d be caught any minute, the robber looked over his shoulder , then back at the stolen pile of goods. He cursed, stepped back, and ran out the broken door of the shop.

Deadpool would have counted this as a win, in his opinion.

_{Yeah, no one even died!}_

**[If they didn’t die, it’s not a win** **_.]_ **

That was the truth for old Deadpool, maybe, but by the new rules he’d been learning from Spider-Man, that was a huge plus. So what if he hadn’t captured the man? Deadpool watched as sweetie pie Peter attempted to pick up everything the man had taken and pile it nicely on the counter, even putting the change back correctly in the register. Yeah, he couldn’t imagine this kid ending anyone’s life. Not even in the name of justice.

Peter besides him, however, grew tenser.

Deadpool, not knowing exactly what was going on inside that spidery head of his, but wanting to help regardless, went to place a comforting hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Hey, Webs, I know you didn’t get the guy but—”

Peter flinched away at the contact. Deadpool snatched his hand back like it’d been burnt.

“I _should_ have got him,” Peter ground out. “I had every opportunity. Look at me here, wasting time when—”

Suddenly younger Peter’s head whipped up, and he looked around, and the action seemed to silence Peter besides him from what he was going to say. The new-to-this Spider-Man seemed confused, thrown, as if something was happening he wasn’t used to.

Deadpool, who had worked besides Spider-Man long enough to guess what was going on, asked, “Is that—?”

“My senses?” Peter nearly whispered, his voice growing rough with emotion. “Yes.”

Deadpool, confused as ever at both what was happening in front of them, and what was happening to his friend beside him, watched as younger Peter stepped around the counter, over the broken glass, and onto the street out front. They followed obediently behind him. He took a minute, rubbing at his chest, and looked up and down the sidewalk before finally deciding to go right, walking fast. Apparently not fast enough for current Spider-Man who was nearly on top of the kid, as if urging him to go faster, whispering under his breath words Deadpool couldn’t make out.

**[Can being in this thing for a prolonged time cause craziness, or is ours just catching?]**

_{He’s clearly upset,}_ Yellow cried in defense. _{You’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon, White!}_

Deadpool snickered at the reference as White started in on Yellow, reminding him how they vowed not to support _that_ author ever again, even as an insult! Deadpool got a little distracted, then, joining the ever-growing debate inside his mind. He’d never actually read the books, honestly, but hey, Twitter was fun to scroll through at night to distract himself and _that_ had been one hell of a nuclear blast of backlash.

So, it wasn’t until he heard a pained, anguished cry that he tuned back in to what was going on in front of him.

Younger Peter ran and knelt down besides an older man on the ground, who was bleeding copious from a wound on his chest. His hands hovered shakily over the body before him, as if wanting to touch and not touch at the same time; wondering what they could possibly do to help.

Deadpool’s gaze flickered to the other Peter’s back, but the man was frozen in front of him at the scene. Deadpool took a few hesitant steps towards him, and he noticed Peter’s cheeks glistened with fresh tears.

“ _Uncle Ben_ ,” younger Peter moaned, choking on a cry. “No, no, no, no.”

It was easy to tell that the man in front of them was already gone, the amount of blood and the stillness alone an indication. For once Deadpool wished he was wrong. Dead bodies didn’t really phase him anymore, but the heart-wrenching cries of a younger, softer, Spider-Man, and the trail of tears down his friend’s face sure did.

 _{I want to get off this ride now,}_ Yellow sniffled. _{Poor Spider-Man.}_

Poor Spider-Man was right, and the fact he had to relive this nightmare... It caused Deadpool to shudder, making him all the more nervous for _his_ demons that could lay waiting behind closed doors.

Older Peter stayed frozen, but when younger Peter buried his head into his Uncle’s chest and cried, it spurred him into action.

Deadpool kept his distance, knowing he shouldn’t have ever witnessed this, and let him have this moment with as much privacy as he could.

Peter crouched down on the opposite side of his Uncle, the wounded man framed by past and present. Red rimmed eyes roamed, taking in a face they hadn’t seen in person in years, before hands wiped hastily at fallen tears.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Ben,” his rough, emotional voice croaked out. “I’m sorry I failed you.”

The soft cries of a younger, distraught Peter mingled with the apologies of the older and Deadpool felt his two sizes too small heart break. His mask suddenly felt uncomfortably moist, and dammit, he hated crying in his get up. Leather and tears just did not mix well.

His Peter had leaned over, letting his forehead rest on his Uncle Ben’s still chest.

White eyes flickered from the scene in front of him to the door that blinked into existence behind Peter, and Deadpool, wanting to leave but unwilling to interrupt, inched toward it silently.

Was there ever enough time to say goodbye to loved ones who left us too soon?

Deadpool, thinking distinctly of Vanessa, knew the answer all too well.

Finally, with his hand on the handle, and his heart in a vice, Deadpool called out softly, “Hey, Spidey? Doors here.”

Peter startled, as if forgetting Deadpool was there at all, and nodded, eyes still on his Uncle. He pressed a kiss to his forehead, hand over the man's heart, then rose on shaky legs.

Peter’s gaze stayed on the pavement below, not lifting to meet Deadpool’s eyes once as the door was held open for him. Deadpool stopped him, however, with a clean handkerchief held between gloved fingers before Peter could pass.

He lifted his watery gaze to Deadpool’s and in their locked gaze, Deadpool’s _felt_ the pain radiating from those gorgeous brown eyes. Peter nodded his head once, reached for the offering, and thanked him quietly as he dabbed at his face.

“Don’t mention it, Webs,” Deadpool looked back at younger Peter, alone and still sobbing over his dead Uncle, and wished he could have been there for _that_ Spider-Man, too. With more than a handkerchief. “Don’t mention it.”

Deadpool closed the door with a resonating click.

* * *

Silence stretched as they walked on, away from the disappearing door and the haunting memory inside it. Occasional sniffs echoed through the quiet as Peter collected himself, eventually tucking the used handkerchief into the back of his jeans pocket.

Would it be weird to ask for it back, Deadpool wondered as his gaze focused on Peter’s jeans.

**[Of course, you freak.]**

Right, yeah, _of course._

It didn’t stop him from feeling envious, just a little bit, of it being tucked into that back pocket, so close to that cute, round—

“It was the man I let go,” Peter broke the silence to confide, and Deadpool suddenly felt bad for his objectifying thoughts. But he couldn’t help it; even a sad, teary eyed Spider-Man was a hot one.

“...if you were wondering...” Peter’s dejected voice echoed quietly through the void.

“I found out later from the police. Not even by my own investigation because I’d never even _considered—”_ Peter breathed evenly through his nose for a moment, collecting himself. “He’d had my Uncle’s wallet on him when they took him in. That was the only way they knew. Clearly he’d been looking for money. If I’d left that robber alone that night…”

Deadpool wanted to tell him that there was no guarantee his Uncle wouldn’t have met the thief anyway; still desperate for money despite what he’d already stolen. There was no use, Deadpool had learned, wondering about the ‘what ifs’ when there was no going back to change them. But he kept those thoughts to himself.

“There was a time in the beginning, after that, where I almost didn’t want to become Spider-Man.” And wasn’t that an admission that came out of left field…

 _{No Spider-Man!? That’s not a world I’d want to live in!}_ Yellow cried dramatically.

Deadpool silently agreed. A world without Spider-Man would be like living in a world without greasy, authentic mexican cuisine. Like sure, maybe he’d _survive_ without it but _would_ _he want to_?

“After what happened to Uncle Ben...” Peter blew out a shaky breath, “after what _I_ let happen to Uncle Ben, I felt like, was I worthy of being a hero?”

Deadpool, who had never met a more noble or morally sound man in his life, opened his mouth to object to that _atrociously false statement_ , but Peter kept on going.

“When you do the things I can,” Peter told him, puffy, red rimmed eyes finally lifting to meet Deadpool’s, “but you choose not to, and _then_ bad things happen… they happen _because_ of you.”

Deadpool took a minute to gather his thoughts on that loaded statement, considering he’d always been the _bad thing_ happening. It was only in recent years Spider-Man had shown him what his powers could do for _good_ and not just their ability to be used for his own gain involving money or revenge.

“Casualties are bound to happen in our line of work,” he reminded Peter of that brutal fact, “especially to the ones we love dearly.”

The ex-mercenary had learned that first, second, and _third_ hand.

“I know. It’s one of the reasons why I keep my identity as tight as I do.”

Deadpool felt that sentence slash through him, cutting as sufficiently and plainfully as one of his own katanas, and he was unable to hold in his tiny flinch. That one wasn’t going to heal quickly. It was a sobering reminder that, up until this dashing rescue, he hadn’t been privy to that information. Perhaps he never would have been.

Preceptive as always, Peter caught Deadpool’s flinch. “I didn’t mean—Honestly, I’m okay with you knowing, DP. I was going to tell you eventually. I just—”

Deadpool’s masked eyes scrunched in confusion as Peter cut himself off, mouth clicking almost audibly. His gaze tore from Deadpool’s to continue staring at the endless white floor as if it somehow held all the answers to the universe.

“Well, I guess being forced by an enemy is as good a time as any,” Deadpool joked, but the tone of his voice sounded strained even to his own ears.

 **[He was never going to tell you** ** _.]_ **White’s belittling voice taunted him.

“Deadpool, really, I—”

“Would you look at that,” Deadpool interrupted with a slight edge to his voice, “saved by the door.”

In front of them stood an identical door to the last one they’d gone through, and their conversation halted as they entered, both of them bracing for the unknown memory it held within.

* * *

The next memory they stepped into was dark and uninviting, yet strangely familiar in it’s homeliness.

Deadpool knew where they were immediately. He recognized the cheap wood paneled walls, riddled with holes, and those ugly secondhand floral curtains; knew that beer stained, cigarette-burned couch even better, where he’d sat and vegged tv listlessly, attempting to tune out his screaming parents over the loudest volume he could manage before incurring his father’s wrath.

This was not your standard living room. No, it was more than that. It was the living room from hell, Satan’s personal waiting room.

Masked eyes scanned frantically for that fucking door, wondering if he wished hard enough he’d manage to manifest it in his desperation, like all the gurus online swore up and down worked.

Deadpool wasn’t actually sure what was about to go down, hardly able to recall his youth beyond it being so _FUBAR_ that he literally escaped to the fucking _army_ , of all places; just like every other kid who’d rather die for their country than stay living with their failure of the word parents.

Deadpool could hardly focus on Peter besides him, who was looking around curiously, as if trying to recall if this was his own memory.

 _Oh, sweet boy,_ Deadpool thought. There was no doubt in his mind that none of Spider-Man’s childhood memories came close to this level of shit show; not with the way he’d cried over his Uncle’s death as if it’d somehow killed a part of himself as well.

With no way to tell which memory this might possibly be, but knowing how bad it _could_ be, Deadpool grew frantic with each second that passed. Was there a certain dance or hand move that went along with manifestation? A special phrase? Maybe like: abracadabra, _come on door fucking manifest already!_

Cue adolescent Wade Winston Wilson entering the scene, hair cut short because it was all his dad would allow, a worn backpack thrown over one shoulder, and a walkmen in hand.

 _A walkmen._ Jesus was he showing his age here. Deadpool wondered if Peter even knew what that thing was. Wasn’t this just a nuclear blast from the past. And the blast radius? About a handful of decades Wade had managed to function due to the repression of these moments, all about to be _completely blown to smithereens._

Because young Wade Wilson had never come from a loving home, and had never had someone to cry over, not in the way Spider-Man clearly had. There were no bittersweet moments to be found in his youth filled memories, only straight bitterness and hate and the ugly truth of his past.

Peter jumped beside him as a tall, somewhat portly man came stalking across the floor from the next room. Teenage Wade was unsuspecting due to the music blasting from the headphones in his ears and his downdrawn gaze. He’d started toeing off his beat up sneaks when his Dad grabbed a handful of collar and _shoved_ , forcing the younger boy back along the wall roughly.

Deadpool breathed out through his nose harshly, fists clenching. God, of all the times he’d wished for the ability to fight his father back, and _now_ he had it, and there was nothing he could do but _watch_.

Peter was looking between Deadpool and the scene unfolding in front of them, lips parted in shock and forehead pinched in concern.

“Deadpoo—”

The walkmen clattered out of Wade’s hands as he tripped backwards from the momentum, causing the headphones to slip down around his neck. The music escaped louder now, but became forgotten background noise under the shouting voice of Thomas Wilson.

“You been getting into my liquor, boy?!” his Dad accused, spit flying in his rage.

Teenage Wade flinched back. “Jesus,” he cursed, attempting to escape his father's hold.

He was shaken roughly for it. “Answer me!”

“It’s three thirty in the afternoon, Dad! How could I? I’ve been in school all fucking day!”

Deadpool had never taken one sip of his fathers fucking cheap ass booze. Mostly because he had way better taste than his piece of shit father in regards to alcohol, but also because his father barely left him a drop to steal _anyway._

The grip on Wade’s shirt tightened, fabric pulling tight against his neck.

“Don’t play fucking coy,” his asshole of a dad sneered.

As Deadpool watched his own younger face start to turn red from lack of oxygen, those feelings of anger and hopelessness filled him once more, as if he was teleported right back into his teenage years again.

“Tom, stop!” A soft, downtrodden voice came from the doorway and Deadpool turned to see—

“Mom,” Deadpool breathed and he hardly noticed Peter besides him watching him with sharp, observant eyes.

She looked pale and sickly, in what must have been the beginnings of her undiagnosed cancer. He’d always just believed it was his father killing her slowly. He’d never suspected there’d been something inside her helping to eat away at her, too.

It didn’t take long for his mother’s timid intervention to escalate things further, as it always did when his father was rip roaring drunk by late afternoon. He left young Wade go, who slumped down, rubbing at his neck, gasping, and made a beeline for his wife.

“You gonna stick up for this thieving little shithead!?” He yelled at her, so close his loud voice caused her to shrink back.

“He just got home from school, Tom,” she reasoned. “He hasn’t done anything—”

“Hasn’t done anything?” his dickhole father repeated with a laugh, and Deadpool was two seconds away from putting a bullet through his head, memory be damned. “Well, we know _that’s_ right on the money. He hasn’t done one useful thing around here but be a burden to us both! And now he thinks he can act all innocent, like I don’t _know_ he’s stealing my shit? And you’re still going to stick up for him!”

“Tom, please, he—”

A loud, painful slap echoed in the tiny living room, and _that was it_ . Deadpool reached for his gun, _fuck_ this memory, but a firm hand on his arm stopped him. The touch drew him out of the consuming memory, enough to see reason that going all shooty shooty wouldn’t help. Even if he _really_ wanted to blast his father’s head from his shoulders like he’d dreamt of doing all through his childhood.

Peter’s hand made to slip away, as if unsure the touch was welcome, but sudden movement ahead of them caught Deadpool’s attention and he captured the retreating hand in his and _tugged._

Deadpool cut through the altercation in front of them, past his own curses, his mother’s sobs, and his father’s shouts. His mother defending Wade always ended her with a black eye, and Wade defending his mother always ended with an asswhooping for him. Neither one of them could ever win against Thomas Wilson.

It had been better off forgetting who the two of his parents had been altogether.

He wasn’t thankful for this reminder.

Deadpool opened the door so fast the hinges protested, all but shoving Peter through it before slamming it behind himself.

He’d sealed the door once on those memories, a long time ago. He wasn’t so sure it would stay closed again a second time.

* * *

It took Deadpool an embarrassing long time to realize he was still clutching Peter’s hand in his, too worried about calming his sharp, erratic breathing to notice. The voices in his head were twittering like birds in the early morning, going haywire after the memory they’d just escaped. Feeding off each other and using it as ammunition to taunt him, urge him, persuade him to—

The squeeze of a smaller, yet unmistakably stronger, hand in his brought him back from the ledge of insanity somewhat. Settled him. The weight of another’s hand in his sure felt nice and, _god_ , when was the last time he’d _held hands_ with someone _?_ He clung to it like a lifeline.

Eventually his breathing mellowed, as did the voices in his head (minimally, but tolerable) and Peter’s grip tightened once more, reminding Deadpool he was there. Deadpool looked down into concerned brown eyes and suddenly realized that the few squeezes had probably been Peter attempting to draw his hand back. _Shit._

Deadpool dropped the hand in his as if it burnt, but instead of Peter taking it back gladly like he imagined, it hovered between them, his expression looking slightly crestfallen.

 _{You’re fucking everything up!_ _Look how sad you made him!}_

**[Probably because a grown man is falling apart in front of him. Pitiful. Pull yourself together!]**

“Sorry,” Deadpool apologized out loud, although he wasn’t entirely sure just who he was addressing, the boxes or Peter. If he were honest he wasn’t even really sure what he was apologizing for, his too long capture of Peter’s hand or the fact that they’d both been forced to witness that depressing piece of his shitty past.

The silence ticked on between them until Peter finally let his hand fall away, and Deadpool wondered if he’d miss something, as his expression looked disappointed.

“We all have memories we don’t want to relive,” Peter reminded him, fresh off the pain of his own last memory.

While Deadpool could understand what Peter was trying to say, there was just no comparing it.

There wasn’t a memory of the hero’s yet that had made Deadpool reverse his thoughts of heroism in relation to the other man. But Deadpool had plenty of demons hiding in his noggin, ready to pounce unsuspectingly to make him look like the Very Bad Guy he once had been, and still often was. The difference between their memories was that Deadpool’s memories showed all the nitty gritty reasons he’d turned into Deadpool, legendary merciless mercenary. Peter’s memories displayed every shiny reason why _he_ was the city-saving hero known as Spider-Man.

Peter hadn’t let his past drag him down.

Deadpool had let his consume him whole.

It was like comparing ripe, juicy apples to moldy, old oranges.

Peter hesitated and Deadpool was certain he was about to say something else, but he only sighed softly and suggested instead, “Guess we should keep going.”

Although Deadpool nodded his head reluctantly in agreement, everything within him tensed in protest. He wanted to know what Peter had been about to say, and why he’d looked rejected instead of relieved as his hand had slipped out of Deadpool’s own. He wanted answers, if only to delay the inevitable and postpone the rest of the memories laid out before them. Now that he knew his own memories were in the mix, each door handle felt like releasing the pin of a grenade and Deadpool had no way of knowing if it would detonate once he walked through. Physically being blasted to bits was a bitch, 0/10 would not recommend, but it was ten times worse being blown to smithereens _mentally._

**[You should be used to it by now.]**

Deadpool ignored the mocking voice. Deadpool wished he had the brains to match his brawn. He wanted to play the genius, scratch his head and mull it over until he figured out how to whiz them out of this place, skipping all these damn doors completely.

But not even Stark had the brain power to get them out of this one, and wasn’t that just sad? So with no other escape route coming to him miraculously, Deadpool followed Peter into the white abyss and kept on walking, even if every step closer to another door felt like walking to the gallows.

The next door descended on them quickly, which felt like both a blessing and a curse all at once. At least it saved them both from feeling compelled to bring up awkward conversation after that hand-holding moment, Deadpool thought, somewhat relieved. Although Deadpool could see those brown eyes sparkling with questions, and he wanted nothing less than to talk about his feelings _or_ his shitty childhood with Spider-Man, who in his mind was second to Cap in the virtuous department. Cap kissed babies, sure, _lovely_ , but Spider-Man walked little old ladies across the street _and_ shared _churros_ with them. Hello, wholesome.

Deadpool hated that one of his own tarnished memories, however small, was floating around in that honorable head of his. From the memories Deadpool had managed to see, it was easy to piece together the backstory of Spider-Man; while unmistakably sad, sure, it was also _noble_ , and it certainly didn’t involve the dark and undesirable things Wade had been through and done. No siree.

The door in front of them mocked Deadpool in it’s unassuming nature, tormenting him with all the dishonorable memories that could potentially be exposed behind it. Whatever small amount of retribution Deadpool had managed to accumulate these last few years since teaming up with Spider-Man, and whatever Spidey had seen within him to take that chance, could very well come crumbling down with one turn of a knob.

Fuck these doors, Deadpool thought as he finally wrapped a gloved hand around it and turned. He’d only hope Peter had similar sentiments, and would maybe still let Deadpool hang around for taco tuesdays with him every once and awhile. He’d always loved those days the most.

Deadpool gestured grandly as he opened the door, “Spider’s first.”

Peter looked hesitant himself to pass through, but after a glance at Deadpool he set his shoulders and walked in.

For a split second Deadpool considered not following.

_{COWARD!}_

**_[COWARD!]_ **

The voices crowed in unison and Deadpool didn’t try to argue with them. His only response was in the slam of the door as he shut it behind himself.

* * *

Deadpool ducked just in time as a flying cape—a cape, what?!—soared over him, narrowly missing his head.

“What the hell—” Deadpool straightened up, watching the scene unfolding before him with wide, white-masked eyes. This certainly wasn’t earth, and these certainly weren’t the Avengers.

_{Maybe these are the off world version of the Avengers?}_

**[More like the Walmart version, you mean.]**

Peter stood beside him looking just as invested, his eyes roaming from person to person, although there was a lot less confusion in them than in Deadpool’s own eyes, which scanned curiously over the alien ( _heh, literally_ ) landscape. Half decimated buildings and barren terrain spread along like a dystopian backdrop, lending to the idea that this world had long since been abandoned, left on it’s own to crumble and decay.

Wade imagined civilization hadn't thrived here in a long, long time, and he wondered just what series of events could have managed to transpire to bring them all to this point. Off world. On a friggin’ _planet_ that decidedly _was not Earth._ The floating rocks in the sky could have told him that alone, but the dead giveaway was the gigantic moon and the cloudy, bizzare atmosphere that hovered around it like a golden fog. No, this was not where they called home.

This was somewhere far, far away.

The answer to his pondered question arrived seconds later as Deadpool honed back in on the battle before them and a giant, purple man with a weird ass chin wearing a bejeweled glove ( _Michael Jackson wore it better!)_ grabbed Spidey and tossed him like a rag doll. It seemed the webslinger’s usual quips and fast reflexes weren’t enough against this Barney-on-steroids.

But as he went down there was someone who followed his path, specifically Iron Man in his fancy flying suit, and— good _lord_ . Deadpool gave a roll of his eyes. _Of fucking course_ Stark would bring explosions to an _alien fight_. Even Deadpool knew those glorified sparkles weren’t enough to stop this behemoth.

The man walked through the flames easily ( _called it!)_ , somehow sucking the fire up with his magical hand of doom. Wielding his gauntlet of fire, he unleashed it back onto Stark who, if a tad bit ludicrously, didn’t seem impervious to his own flames.

“You’d think he would have made that thing flame retardant by now,” he muttered to himself and his boxes, hands itching to reach back for his katanas, wanting to show them all what a hefty dose of Maximum Effort and Unable to Die looked like when combined.

There were too many people zipping from all directions for him to keep track of (even a blue cyborg looking chick, and Deadpool wondered if her and the purple man were related. Maybe the closer together on the color wheel the more related? _Is that speciest?_ He pondered to himself. It wasn’t like he walked around with aliens, how was he to know what was politically correct?! The closest he’d gotten to an alien was Thor, which barely counted, because _look_ at the man. Plus the God himself tended to avoid Deadpool like the plague ever since the hammer incident. { _We don’t talk about that!}_ ).

Magic and debris flew around in a frenzy as they all fought, but his eyes easily kept track of a younger Peter in a flashy, jazzed up Spider-Man suit that _screamed_ ostentatious Stark design. Beyond that Deadpool wasn’t familiar with anyone else, and to be honest, he didn’t particularly care bec—

_{Are those antennas!?}_

Deadpool watched as a woman with dark hair and even darker eyes and oh, yeah, _antennas_ rushed past him. The blur of a red-inked, burly man followed only a few steps behind shielding her from a large chunk of debris thrown their way and—

Wait a damn minute.

Deadpool did a double take. He watched as she seemed to fall through a portal, which was awesome, honest, but screw the antenna lady, that was old news—

“Is that _Dave Bautista?_ ” Deadpool cried, gloves hands coming up to cradle his head in disbelief. Leather on leather squeaked as they slid down to his cheeks in amazement, and he turned to point accusingly at Peter. “You never told me you went to space and met _Dave Bautista!”_

“Huh?” Peter’s eyes slid from the fight that seemed to have shifted in their favor, if the sleep-inducing leg lock the antenna gal now seemed to have around the purple man’s head was any indication, huh, so that’s where she’d went, and over to Deadpool.

His eyes followed the direction Deadpool was pointing, landing on the tattooed man, and his eyebrows furrowed. “You mean Drax?”

“ _That’s_ what they call him up here?” Deadpool gasped, eyes still glued to the wrestler look-alike. He watched as they all took turns trying to get the large gemmed metal glove off an insanely thick-fingered hand.

“I want to meet space-Bautista! Is there a SHIELD run meet and greet? Does he do signings? How’d _you_ get here?”

Peter seemed amused by the barrage of questions, even if he was still half-way focused on what was going on before them. “The ride I hitched is long gone. Maybe you can ask Carol.”

At Deadpool’s blank look he elaborated, “You know, Captain Marvel? She’s always going off on space journeys.”

“ _Another_ captain,” Wade intoned, crossing his arms. As if the world needed another righteous person leading the charge. “Less uptight, I hope.”

Then Deadpool paused, considering.

“She tryin’ to steal Rogers thunder?” He asked Peter, hopeful. Mr. Red, White and Blue with _boobs_? Sounded promising. Deadpool had always liked dominating, head-strong women.

“Not quite,” Peter smiled softly. “She’s hardly on earth, and I doubt Steve feels particularly threatened just because they share an honorific.”

 _Too bad_ , Deadpool thought as he looked back to the scene. He side eyed Peter as he casually suggested, “Maybe we can call Captain Cutie when this is all said and done. We deserve a vacation!”

Peter looked back too and they both watched as the fight that had seemed to be on its way to victory quickly made a turn for the worse. The ragtag group before them fought more desperately as everything they’d thrown at the purple giant only proved futile, and suddenly everyone was flying in different directions as the magic the purple people eater shot at them from his golden glove seemed too powerful to overcome.

The magical caped man seemed too stubborn to quit, though. Their magic clashed back and forth, a battle of intensity, before he, too, went soaring away like a discarded dishrag, sagging into himself as he hit a protruding boulder with a sickening crack.

Peter winced.

“I don’t know if I would call space a vacation,” Peter finally answered. “This was my first and last visit.”

Deadpool felt the metaphorical shove of his own foot in his mouth, and made no more mentions of visiting space for recreational visits again.

The glow of magic and Stark’s repulsors cast bright swaths of color across their captivated faces as he flew in swiftly after the caped man's defeat. Deadpool would give the asshole one thing, he was as stubborn as a herpes flare up. The fight continued on until in a shocking turn of events Stark was impaled with his own weapon.

Deadpool winced in sympathy. _Been there, done that, got the postcard_ , he thought. The boxes used the opportunity to start loudly listing the various things he’d managed to be hurt with, but Deadpool didn’t let their insistent jabbering distract him from what raged on in front of him.

Finally the caped man, conscious once more, bargained for Stark’s life from his collapsed position. He brandished a glowing green gem and allowed it to leave his protection; the shiny stone floated up and away, into the large man’s purple hand, and he looked like the world’s douchiest gem collector as he added it to his gauntlet smugly. He shivered with power as it connected, aligning with the other stones, and Deadpool wanted nothing more than to sever that hand off completely.

A blast erupted from the glinting gauntlet and Wade nearly pulled a muscle as he craned his neck up to see the man in the helmet fling himself unexpectedly through the sky, screaming, unleashing a determined wave of ammunition. It hardly deterred the larger man, the rain of fire snuffing out like candles upon contact as he faded into a cloud of blue to god knows where.

“Did we just lose?” Deadpool heard the man, sans helmet now, ask in dismay, and Deadpool suddenly felt the bone deep understanding that he had missed something very important.

“When was this?” Deadpool questioned, turning to Peter, confusion growing as everyone seemed defeated and grim; as if they’d lost more than just a fight, more than just a pretty gemstone.

Peter turned to him, slightly baffled. “I was about 16, maybe 17, around this time, I think. This happened a while ago, DP. You… you don’t remember the snap?”

“The _what_?”

“The snap. The blip. When Thanos wiped out half the universe with one little— ” Peter snapped his fingers together, eyes dull with sorrow.

“Say _whaaat?_ ” Deadpool gaped, perturbed. “I’ll admit I might be _a litttle_ out of my mind, but I think I’d remember something—” he gave a nod towards the direction the man had just left “— _or someone_ like that.”

Peter’s face scrunched up in confusion, but then it shifted into something Deadpool knew too well. Concern. _Pity._

The look on Peter’s face made him itch with self-consciousness. How many times had that same gaze been directed at him behind the mask without him knowing? Honestly, he didn’t want to know, but now that he could see the emotions flickering across a bare face…

Using his natural talent for being funny even in the worst of times, Deadpool joked in deflection, “I must not have been in the universe yet.”

But Peter didn’t laugh. Not even the crack of a smile, or a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. _I’m getting rusty_ , Deadpool thought. Peter’s face only held that same concerned, considering look. Wade opened his mouth to say something—

“Something’s happening,” came the soft voiced interruption of the antenned women before she _fell away to dust_.

“What… the fuck,” Deadpool’s distressed voice carried off into a horrified whisper.

“The snap,” Peter answered him bluntly, and his pale, grim face mirrored the others around them.

Space Bautista was next, crumbling into a thousand pieces and flying off into the wind. Guess, he wasn’t getting that autograph after all, Deadpool thought half-hysterically. “Quill,” he breathed as it happened, looking desperately at the man who'd Deadpool had seen wearing the helmet from earlier.

Deadpool’s mouth hung open in horror as he watched.

The man named Quill’s face fluttered between different emotions: frightened, shocked, incredulity. A plethora of unnamable emotions crossed his features as he watched what Deadpool assumed were his friends disappear around him. Stark stepped up to him, talking reassuringly at Quill just before he, too, followed his friends on the tail end of the same gust of wind.

The caped man was next, talking lowly to Stark before succumbing to the same fate, and Deadpool had the alarming realization that _half the universe_ was a hell of a lot of people, and he might very well have to watch as—

“Mr. Stark,” came a familiar voice.

Although younger sounding, it still held the same recognizable inflection as the man standing beside him. Spider-Man’s mask was off now, and he was white as a ghost, curled over and limping as he made his way over to Stark.

 _Oh god, no_.

“I don’t feel so good,” Peter exclaimed, holding out shaky hands.

_No, no, no._

Suddenly Deadpool didn’t feel so good either.

In front of them the younger Peter fell, stammering, into Stark’s arms. Stark caught him firmly, dropping down with him as Peter’s legs gave out, unable to hold them both up due to his own grievous injury. Gloved hands scrambled for a firmer grasp on Stark’s jacket beneath his fingers; as if somehow a tighter hold might allow him to stay, to spare him the same fate as the others.

“I don’t want to go, sir,” he whimpered and Deadpool echoed it unknowingly as his heart ached in response to watching a younger Spidey quiver in fear.

“Please,” younger Peter begged in Stark’s arms, “I don’t want to go, please, sir.”

The sentence seemed to repeat itself in an endless loop in Deadpool’s mind, or maybe that was just because Peter kept repeating it until he collapsed, falling out of Stark’s arms to land roughly on his back along the planet’s rocky ground.

“I’m sorry,” were Peter’s final words, and Deadpool watched as the shape of the words formed on his lips one last time before he finally succumbed to the horrifying thing that was happening, _the snap_ , scattering on a breeze in a thousand Spider-Man shaped pieces.

Deadpool refrained from attempting to snatch those pieces back, hardly noticing the tremor that had him shaking slightly, and even the boxes were stunned silent within his mind. What had seemed like a fun, kickass fight set in the depths of space had quickly turned into a horrifying shitshow.

“But—You...” Deadpool trailed off, disbelieving, before shaking himself out of it and stating, obviously, “You came back.”

Peter nodded, but his eyes stayed glued forward as he watched Stark silently lose it. His hands pressed desperately to the spot a younger Spider-Man was dematerializing from rapidly, attempting to catch the last few pieces of the boy slipping through his hands before they drifted away completely.

As the pieces of younger Peter faded, so did the memory.

Neither one of them had noticed when the door had decided to materialize, both too focused on the scene unfolding before them, but as with all the times before it stood off to the far side in it’s typical conspicuous fashion.

“I don’t remember being gone,” Peter suddenly told him, his eyes still stuck to that spot despite Stark, and himself, being long gone. He crept closer to it, cautiously, before finally kneeling down.

“I barely even remember this part, to be honest. I just remember the feeling. The… the wrongness. My senses must have—It wasn’t pain, really, but…” Peter paused, as if trying to remember the feeling so he could describe it accurately. Deadpool tracked the small shiver that made its way down Peter’s strong back. “When I came back I had no idea it had been five years. We started fighting Thanos right away and—and Tony, he nearly _died_ saving the world, to defeat Thanos. Then afterwards, while he fought for his life, I went on a stupid school trip, just trying to be a regular teenager, resenting the years I’d had ripped from me unknowingly. But even that ended up with me fighting Mysterio instead…”

He trailed off into silence, but his hand touched the spot in front of him where his younger self and Stark had been.

Deadpool let him have this moment he clearly needed, still in complete shock himself at what he’d seen; his friend disappearing, crumbling into non-existence, and yet somehow still standing here before him.

It made his skin feel too tight and his boxes restless, the sensation too similar to when he was hallucinating. Deadpool’s fingers twitched, wanting to reach out and make sure _his_ Peter was still here and not something his mind had conjured up. He settled for a step closer instead. He pictured himself in Stark’s place, watching as Spider-Man sifted hopelessly through his fingers, like sand at the beach, and decided there was no way he wouldn’t have tried moving heaven and earth to get his webbed friend back.

“I guess I never really got to process it,” Peter reflected, finally turning his gaze back to Deadpool. His eyes were red, but dry, and his voice sounded thick with emotion.

_{COMFORT HIM!}_

**[LEAVE HIM BE!]**

Like the voices of evil and eviler they waged a war of advice, a rapid game of ping pong inside his skull. Deadpool attempted to ignore them as he took a half step closer and awkwardly patted at Peter’s shoulder. Wade’s brand of comfort was limited, as the most comforting he had to be most days was reassuring his favorite taqueria he often frequented that it was okay they forgot his extra salsa last time, no worries! But the simple gesture must have done the trick because Peter’s tense shoulder relaxed visibly under his touch.

Deadpool let his hand squeeze slowly, cautiously, as if the man would wretch himself out from under it in disgust. When he stayed put, Deadpool exhaled soundlessly, relieved, as if he’d somehow managed to snip the right wire while defusing a bomb, and attempted to exude comfort. Peter’s head was tucked into his chest, eyes downcast, his hand still laying palm down on the ground as if he could somehow change the outcome of that day by touch alone.

Deadpool, feeling unsettled, and a little daring, let his hand wander over farther to the nape of Peter’s neck. He let it rest there, cradling gently, fingers and thumb on either side. He tensed, wondering if this would be when Peter turned around and berated him for his lack of boundaries, but Peter didn’t seem to mind, or maybe he just hadn’t noticed. Holding his breath, Deadpool let his fingers slide slowly into the too-long hair curling at the base of his friend's neck, wishing he could feel the silky soft strands through his leather glove.

It was a goddamn mystery to Deadpol why Peter had given him a chance. When all he’d been was blood and death and self-destruction, somehow Spider-Man had seen something worth redeeming. Wade would never understand it, had never asked why, too afraid of the answer, because every part of who he was misaligned with every part of who Spider-Man was. Who _Peter_ was. They were polar opposites. Where Peter was brave and loyal, Deadpool was all bravado and selfishness. While Deadpool was aloof and cruel, Peter was kind hearted and true.

Spider-Man would save the world and ask nothing in return.

Deadpool would have burned it down for a high enough price tag.

He had no idea how someone this perfect could ever let themselves be touched by a monster like him. But he wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth, as his own shaky nerves settled from just being able to feel that Peter was whole and solid and _alive_ under his hand.

There was no telling how many minutes had passed as they stayed there silently, both caught up in their own thoughts. It was Peter’s head popping up, Deadpool’s hand slipping free where it had started to twirl lightly at his curls, that broke the spell they’d both been under.

Deadpool felt calmer, steadier, if a touch awkward. Peter had needed him in that moment, but if he were truthful the ex-mercenary had needed him just as much. Wade was embarrassed by that neediness. The memory had nothing to do with him, wasn’t even _his_ , and he was breaking down!

They’d definitely been in this place for too long.

Peter straightened with a soft groan as blood rushed back into his legs. Deadpool tilted his head to the door and Peter nodded, reading his silent commands easily with the familiarity they’d gained through their many crime fighting team ups.

Peter stopped him at the door, hand catching Deadpool’s elbow as he reached for the doorknob and giving it a small, thankful squeeze.

Deadpool read his silent message loud and clear.

_I’m glad you’re here too, Webs._

* * *

For every few steps Deadpool took, he allowed his eyes to slide over to Peter less than an arm's length away, locking in on the sliver of exposed skin at the base of his neck, before slipping back down to the white floor below.

Even though Deadpool had felt Peter hale and whole under his own hand (and _god_ , Wade couldn’t stop wishing he’d pulled his damn glove off, scars be damned, wanting to know if Peter’s skin would have felt as warm and soft as it looked), his gaze still honed in on the other man as his thoughts drifted, as if he might disappear the second his eyes slid from him.

What would have happened if Spider-Man had disappeared forever that day, and Deadpool had never gotten to know him?

Deadpool knew exactly what would have happened, and that knowledge crawled under his skin like fire ants, biting and burning him in it's too-honest truth.

Because without Spider-Man, Wade Winston Wilson would have been left to his murderous ways and destructive lifestyle, hell bent on making anyone with a bounty on their head suffer. Starting every day with a thirst to kill and ending every night with the will to die, he’d been a sad excuse for a man wrapped up in pain, leather, and ammunition.

**[You’re still a sad excuse for a man.]**

_{But we’ve got_ purpose _now!}_

It was Spider-Man seeing past all that and, miraculously, extending a hand out to teach him how to be a hero that had turned Wade’s life around. That had given him something other than pain and death to focus on; that fueled him to be a better person.

This man, who’d somehow escaped the traumatizing experience of non-existence and still came back a better hero from it. This man, who had taken a chance on a murderous sack of shit like him. This man, who Wade owed more than he’d ever allowed himself to think before.

This man, who he’d come so close to losing without ever having known it.

It was a blessing that Thanos motherfucker had been taken out, or he’d have been a dead ringer for the protagonist of Deadpool 3. Wade didn’t like people messing with those he cared for. Wasn’t a successful franchise more than enough proof that Deadpool had no qualms about protecting his people? He’d make anyone who even had the _thought_ to mess with them regret the day they ever laid one harmful hand on those who Deadpool called his own.

Masked eyes flickered to Peter’s neck again. That soft-looking spot taunted him, so close yet so far.

Deadpool forced himself to look away, back to the monotonous white floor.

Not that Spider-Man was his, or ever would be.

Out of the corner of his eye, Deadpool noticed Peter glance his way and panic seized him suddenly. Was his spider sense going off like an annoying car alarm, warning each time of an unwanted wandering gaze? Perhaps his neck was tingly from the lengthy moments Wade had spent staring at it in the short amount of time since they’d exited the last memory.

He kept his eyes resolutely forward, even as they strained with desire to shift sideways again, as if tempted by the call of a siren song. He’d always had a thing for necks; Vanessa had let him mark her up like an enthusiastic vampire. She said it was good for business; men liked to be competitive. Right now he yearned to run his lips over the smooth skin in front of him, mark it up red and bruised, until there wasn’t an inch that didn’t scream _Deadpool had been there_.

Eventually, Peter’s own gaze turned forward again, and he let out a soft sigh.

Something twinged within Deadpool at the sound. Here he was being melancholy and _horny_ when Peter had just been forced to relive a grade A shitty memory.

**[You do have quite a knack for making everything about you.]**

_Fuck you, White_ , Deadpool thought back petulantly.

A deep cackle responded.

As did Peter.

“White?” Peter’s puzzled voice asked. Shit. He’d _thought_ he’d spoken to white with his _inside_ voice.

His brain to mouth filter always got a bit jumbled when he was waist deep in his feels, and this whole trip so far had been nothing but one whole emotional rollercoaster ride, hellbent on having him puking up his Wheaties or, in this case, his box-ramblings.

He knew Spider-Man often heard him talk to himself, but Deadpool tried to keep White and Yellow on the down low. Nothing like a good old fashion ‘I hear voices’ as an icebreaker.

_Not._

Deadpool had been down that road and knew how it ended. A one way ticket to a dead end town called Nofriendsville. Nah, pass. He imagined Peter could chalk up his eccentric mutters as part of his tolerable amount of crazy, but if he unleashed it all on him? Let him know that sure, Deadpool talked to himself, but voices _talked back?_

Uh, no. Not happening.

“Just this endless fucking _white_ ,” Deadpool answered on the spot, suddenly thankful for the color surrounding them that he’d been cursing out endlessly this whole time. “It’s giving me a goddamn headache.”

Peter didn’t look convinced, and although he didn’t ask any more questions, he did, however, seem to sway a little closer. Their strides were almost in step now, and their arms brushed every few paces. It sent a thrill up Deadpool’s spine even if he couldn’t feel anything but the pressure of Peter’s arm through his suit.

It still felt like something was hovering between them, but before Deadpool could think any more of it, the door materialized in front of them, another ticking memory time bomb.

* * *

Deadpool wasn’t even fully in the room before the smell hit him.

Recognizable, _distinct_ , smelling of heartbreaking memories and bone chilling nostalgia.

An unmistakable smell that, despite not having smelled in _years_ , he’d know anywhere.

It was the perfect combination of Eau de shitty old apartment, that musky, earthy smell from too much rain water and age, mixed with that temptuous sweet smelling perfume she always wore.

It was the same perfume she used to steal straight from Macy’s store counters, distracting the sales girls with her sharp kohl-lined eyes and even sharper prettiness; all of them were too focused on _envying_ her, wishing they could _be_ her, than worrying about her pilfering fingers.

God, that scent had been hardwired so far into his brain that even after all these years Deadpool knew exactly who he was about to see before walking into the room.

_Vanessa._

As his eyes took in the old, cluttered walls of their tiny—

 **[Shitty** **_.]_ **

_Cozy,_ countered Vanessa's clear voice stubbornly in his head, drowning out White’s.

—apartment he felt an ache deep in his breastbone, but it was incomparable to the painful stab of longing seeing _her_ gave him.

It was nothing like being stabbed and everything like being impaled, right through the heart and straight on till sunrise, because Vanessa hurt to look at, like staring at the sun for too long. God, she _was_ the sun, brightness and shineshine embodied, and fuck, Wade couldn’t help looking. Couldn’t _look away._ Wasn’t it always that way? You couldn’t help risking a peek at the sun, despite being told it might blind you, naturally curious, longing for a glimpse of something you know you could only ever have fleetingly.

Deadpool would burn his corneas to nothing if it meant having one more moment to see her whole and alive.

Smiling.

 _Laughing_.

Judging by the gaudy christmas sweater she wore, and the dozens of ornaments strewn all over the place, it was very nearly Christmas, one of their favorite holidays after meeting one another.

 _{Not anymore.}_ Yellow’s glum voice added. He was always pestering Deadpool to decorate around the holidays, but it’d lost all meaning to him after Vanessa.

Before her, it’d just been another shit holiday he’d ignored with too much booze in order to drown out the loneliness and the reminder of his shitty luck in familial relations. After his mutation, after _her_ , he’d switched out the booze for a nice, gaping whole in the head. It usually got him through most of the day before he’d healed enough to do it all over again. By that time he’d wake up, it would be the 26th, and Wade could breathe a little easier.

Vanessa was currently over-decorating what he’d fondly called their Charlie Brown tree as it was devastatingly small and wimpy. By the time she’d pestered him down enough to go get one, it’d been the last one left at the tree farm, but she’d loved it regardless, defending it by saying it had potential. (He remembered joking that she must have thought the same thing about him). What it had were too many cheap Walmart ornaments and way too thin branches. Even from across the room, Deadpool could see they were bowing under the weight of all the ones she’d put on it already.

It didn’t stop her from loading up more, one currently in her hand as she bit her lip, contemplating where to put it. She looked like a dream, in only her christmas sweater and those damn black lacy panties. He never thought he’d get to see _that_ imagine again.

“Deadpool who—” Peter’s hesitant voice abruptly cut off as Wade’s past self came from where he’d clearly been occupied in the bathroom, not visible from where they both stood.

Both their heads turned at the movement. Peter let out a distressed noise.

Seeing his own younger, handsome, clearly unblemished smiling face took the feeling he was already experiencing and _twisted_ it, like a knife deep in his gut. He saw himself walk towards her, wearing a cheap dollar store Santa hat and some tinsel draped around his neck.

Nothing else.

 **[Now that’s a sight for sore eyes.]** White’s bitter voice reminded him painfully.

He was right, of course. Every part of himself looked so soft and smooth; it was like he was looking at a complete stranger. Despite being his own memory, he hardly recalled being that good looking, that unscarred, _that_ _happy_.

As Peter deepened to a red that matched the theme of their decorated apartment, his eyes plastered down to the floor, past-Wade crossed the room and wrapped his hands around Vanessa’s waist, burying his face into her hair.

Deadpool inhaled unthinkingly, and it was almost like he could still smell the scented shampoo he knew his past self was inhaling right now, a delicious hint of apples and something else that always made her so damn appetizing.

“You want to sit in Santa’s lap?” He breathed the question into the delicate skin of her neck, causing a smile to tug at the corner of her lips and a small burst of laughter to escape. She’d always been ticklish there.

She hummed in thought. “Has Santa been good this year?”

He pressed a kiss to the tender spot below her ear. “Isn’t that my question?”

It was a weird feeling, seeing the memory play out in front of him when he had the broken, half-remembered experience of it overlapping in his head. It made an ache form right behind his eyes, and in his heart, this memory within a memory, as he watched himself nuzzle into her. He could remember the feeling of doing it himself. Wade had forgotten plenty, often on purpose, but he could still remember the soft, silkiness of her curls and the even softer feel of her skin. He remembered how warm and inviting she’d been, always willing to be wrapped up in his arms whenever Wade decided he needed her in them.

 _{If you cry, I’m gonna cry!}_ Yellow’s wibbled tearfully.

 **[Pussies.]** White scoffed, disgusted.

Deadpool felt the telltale prickle in his eyes but stubbornly held them back. There was nothing worse than the combination of snot and tears to make this mask wet and even more uncomfortable than usual. Peter was right next to him, too, so he couldn’t take it off to wipe them away. Besides, he’d given his handkerchief to the other man anyway, so there was nothing to wipe his tears with. Therefore, he told himself resolutely, he’d just have to hold them in!

A moment later the click of Vanessa’s record player sounded, and _that’s_ what his past self had been up to, he remembered a moment later as the memory started to click fully into place. She’d always kept it in the corner right next to the bathroom, and Wade was always finding the oddest excuses to go over there, rifling through her collection to play odd, random songs for her.

A soft drum leading up to Frank Sinatra’s deep, smooth voice rang out through their tiny apartment, her favorite song, and past-Wade quickly spun Vanessa around, making her laugh as she sputtered indignantly at him, “Wade!”

He took the ornament out of her hands, throwing it over his shoulder so quick that Peter’s reflexes kicked in, and he dodged it unthinkingly, forcing him to knock abruptly into Deadpool’s bulk.

Peter blushed at his own overreaction, but didn’t move from his closer proximity to Deadpool. His eyes flickered up to watch as Wade, still ridiculously nude, guided Vanessa into the middle of the room and pulled her close, swaying as the song continued around them. Brown eyes flickered back down a moment later. Deadpool hardly noticed, his own eyes staring ahead, unblinking.

“ _In other words, hold my hand,”_ Wade’s atrocious singing voice accompanied his hand as it slipped down to take her’s in his, so they were almost in a proper dance position. _Almost_ being the key word, as his other hand slid down to grope at her ass and tug her closer. _“In other words, baby, kiss me.”_

He watched as his past self kissed her, deep and filthy. Somehow it was almost like Deadpool could feel the pressure of her lips against his despite being across the room, and the weight of her in his arms, despite them being empty.

Vanessa came out of the kiss smiling up at him. An ache spread across Deadpool’s chest at it. That sly, mischievous smile reminded him of the day he met her.

“I’m surprised it’s not Wham!” she teased softly, her eyes twinkling.

Wade’s laugh accompanied his answer, “Wouldn’t be Christmas without Wham!, baby, that’s up next.”

Her laughter surrounded them, just as melodious as the music, and Peter’s gaze flickered up to them before dropping down again.

“I’m sorry,” Peter apologized softly, nearly drowned out by the music.

Deadpool’s own gaze was reluctant to leave Vanessa’s smiling, happy, flushed face, but at the tone of Peter’s voice he broke it, looking over to the man besides him.

“For what?” He asked, gaze shifting from Peter’s to be absorbed back into the dancing couple, eyes drawn like a magnet to _him and Vanessa dancing, God_ , _it felt like a lifetime ago._

“I shouldn’t be seeing this,” Peter admitted dejectedly. “I didn’t realize—”

He cut himself off, and Deadpool glanced over to see Peter’s eyes peek up from the floor then back down again guiltily, a blush spreading hotly over the bridge of his nose like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“I won’t look,” Peter promised Deadpool vehemently, ever the gentlemen.

Deadpool couldn’t help it, even with all the emotions swirling up inside him like a destructive storm, he barked out a laugh because that was _funny_.

“Oh, Spidey,” he chortled, he couldn’t help it, “you can _look._ Even I’m looking. Who wouldn’t? I used to be a _fox!_ ”

**[Now you’re something even a fox wouldn’t sniff at.]**

At that, Deadpool’s laughter abruptly stopped. Vanessa had loved him even after his mutation, of course, but there had been a part of her that he knew missed the way he looked. Maybe not as much as Wade himself had, but he’d still known it. He couldn’t fault her for it, it was what had first attracted both of them together, until their exaggerated game of whose childhood was worse sealed the deal. She’d gotten used to it, his looks, like she promised she would. And it _had_ been a face she’d been willing to sit on, many and multiple times, but he still missed those days, the pre-cancer, non-mutation days, with a fierceness he now only felt for death.

If he remembered correctly, and his memory was shit now, so who knew, this was only hours before he’d popped the question. This couldn’t have been but a few days before they would both find out his diagnosis. Wade remembered wanting to propose to her before Christmas, so it wouldn’t compete with the day but instead enhance it, make it magical, whimsical, a feeling he’d never felt before meeting her. This was probably one of the last few moments of true happiness he’d felt before it all went to hell.

He’d had a twist in his stomach and a headache for days, thinking it was all because of his plan to propose. How stupid he’d been to think his shitty life would have allowed him this one shining moment without first making him give something in return. Equivalent exchange and all that. Yeah, yeah, he’d watched that anime. The Elric brothers had nothing on him. What was an arm and a leg, really? He’d have easily given that up in order to be with Vanessa. But no, instead he’d been given the biggest whammy of them all. El Cancer _everywhere_.

What a fucking twist of fate his life had turned out to be, like he was born from a cursed star instead of two shitty, unfit parents.

His past self was still twirling her around the room like a goddamn fool, naked as the day he was born, smiling like he really believed he’d be allowed to have this for more than just the year that had barely scraped by. Vanessa was smiling back, laughing, loving every insane part of him and matching it tenfold.

It hurt to look at, but Deadpool was used to pain by now.

The song rose in a crescendo, Frank Sinatra’s voice coming out clear and powerful.

“ _In other words,”_ Frank sang on, “ _I love you.”_

 _“I love you,”_ past-Wade sang cheesily into Vanessa’s temple, their dancing having turned into a slowing, sensual sway.

“I love you too, Wade,” Vanessa whispered back, her lips grazing the underside of his chin. She was all too aware how sensitive that spot was for him. Past-Wade shivered.

Deadpool mirrored it as if her lips had touched him, too.

The door materialized behind them moments later, and for once, Deadpool didn’t run for it. Peter, who’d been as quiet as a church mouse beside him, crept towards it. He gave the embrace that was heating up before them a wide berth, making sure not to accidentally bump into them as his past self prodded Vanessa back towards the bed intentionally.

 _{Nooo.}_ Yellow whined, as if he’d been watching a good movie that was shut off right before the good bit. _{I want to stay for this part!}_

 **[Pervert.]** White replied, but it didn’t sound convincing with it’s clear lack of usual lip-curling disgust.

Deadpool didn’t want to leave either. He wanted to exist forever in this memory, set up shop in that dusty corner neither of them had liked because there’d been a forever-growing moldy patch where the roof leaked, and watch himself be happy for what felt like the first time in his life. He wanted to drown in Vanessa’s perfume and greedily collect her smiles, which she never seemed to ration for him.

Deadpool had never seen a more perfect smile.

“Deadpool?” Peter’s called reluctantly from the doorway, as if he could someone read Deadpool’s thoughts and felt bad for tearing him away.

Well, he amended his last thought as Peter’s concerned eyes stayed fixed to him from across the room, maybe that wasn’t quite true anymore.

Deadpool passed by himself, watching as he lifted Vanessa up so easily she was practically climbing him like a tree. He wanted so badly to lean in and smell her hair. However small a gesture, the phantom scent still circled him in a taunting haunt that it was difficult not to act. His fingers creaked in their leather gloves where they yearned to reach out and run through her hair, caress the softness of her skin.

He kept them fisted tightly at his sides.

There was no use touching her; she was only a memory now.

* * *

The door shut behind Deadpool with the softest of clicks, but it might have well been a slam for how loud it echoed in his ears. He had the stilted, faded memory of just what was continuing to happen behind that invisible door like a long-forgotten, outdated VHS tape in his mind.

Behind that door, he would be making love to Vanessa, trading laughter and kisses and moans.

Afterward… He’d propose to her.

Wade’s heart was already familiar with loss and anguish, but this felt like a healed scar ripped open raw, oozing blood and plasma and the fresh torment of a memory he’d long since buried, forgotten in the depths so he wouldn’t remember it and _hurt_.

He didn’t often think or dream of Vanessa anymore. It only ended in gross sobbing, jeering voices, and the blissful sweet silence of nothing only the brief respite of death allowed. Eventually he’d blown most of those memories out of his brain, or so he’d throught. In a more realistic answer, he’d likely repressed them enough to stop them resurfacing to spare himself the excruciating emotional agony it’d kept inflicting.

But this… this was a fresh bruise. This was a new hole in his already swiss cheese-looking heart. No, not just a hole, this _was_ his heart with it’s patchwork of scars ripping, tearing, and cracking wide open because, God, he’d missed her. Every little thing about her cried _home_ and _love_ and _please God let me have this just once_.

He’d had it all right, but everything in Deadpool’s life was fated to expire. Except him, of course.

Honestly, he should have known. Happiness and Wade Wilson were _not_ synonymous. If anything, the minute he’d heard her laugh beautifly at his horrendous jokes, he should have turned tail and run the other way in a hope to save both of them from the heartbreak he knew they were bound for.

Although his life was getting pretty fucking original, even he’d never have expected it to end like this. A messy break up? Sure. Her shoving his things out their apartment window as she verbally exclaimed to the neighborhood how much of an asshole he was? Most definitely. But this… Him, a freddy kruger look alike, and Vanessa, sweet, beautiful Vanessa, dead because of him? Never.

The heels of Deadpool’s boots were the only sound as he strode determinedly forward past Peter, who only hesitated momentarily before hastening to catch up with his long strides.

Deadpool didn’t really want to know what was going through the superheroes mind. If he felt pity, or sorrow. Or, a dirty whisper in the back of his mind that sounded suspiciously like Yellow but could have easily been his own impure thoughts, if he’d liked what he’d seen.

Deadpool let the thought rattle around obtrusively in his head amidst everything else. Maybe he kind of _did_ want to know that.

But once again, his little spider friend was quiet, making it hard for Deadpool put a read on what he could possibly be thinking. And wasn’t that just a bitch? Wade could finally see the man without his mask, something he’d been waiting on bated breath for, and it _still_ wasn’t enough to help him figure out just what the other man was thinking!

Was there a Yelp equivalent website to rate villains and their nefarious plots? If not, it should be a thing because this trip down memory lane was getting a scatching review from him when all this was said and done. 0/10 would not recommend. It was messing with Wade’s already messed up mind being in here. These dredged up memories he’d locked up deep into his subconscious weren’t meant to be re-lived: he’d lived through them once already and wasn’t that enough? He certainly didn’t need to revisit his crazy, not when he lived through it daily. It was making him twitchy and agitated. It felt like the beginning of every downward spiral, when the voices finally won, and he’d spend days just trying to get the damn itch of insanity to _stop_ , to let him have _one moment of peace_. Just one painless moment to think clearly, which never came unless it was at the end of—

His hand rested on the handle of his handgun near his hip. It flexed, but he inhaled deeply and let it out slowly, grip relaxing. He was stronger than this. A childhood memory and the sweet revisit of Vanessa wasn’t enough to stop him from remembering why he was here—to get Peter out of here.

Deadpool, satisfied in his mental stability for the moment, let his focus go back to the man in question. His eyes stayed stubbornly forward, and he bit at his lip worriedly. Deadpool, having seen that gesture enough times, knew something was up.

Thankful to switch his focus from himself to Peter, he asked, “You okay, Spidey?”

Peter’s eyes jumped to his in surprise, as if he, too, had been lost in thought.

He hesitated for a moment before saying, “I never knew you had a wife.”

Deadpool gave a small, regretful shake of his head. “That’s because I didn’t. We never got that far.”

Peter let out a small, “Oh.”

“ _This_ ,” Wade waved a black, gloved hand over himself like he was gunning to be the next Vanna White, “ended up happening. Or, well, El Cancer first, if we’re getting technical, then this. I’d, uh, proposed, but...

“A whole bunch of shit ended up happening.” Deadpool shrugged one shoulder. “We just never got around to it.”

Peter assaulted his bottom lip again, and Deadpool watched fixedly as it grew redder from the abuse.

“You looked happy,” Peter finally decided to say despite the obvious internal wrestling match he’d been having.

Deadpool didn’t talk about Vanessa with anyone. Not even himself, or the voices, for god sakes. But he inhaled sharply and found the words wanted to break free from his chest, rather than be nestled away safely. Perhaps it was the earnest gaze of Peter’s rich, understanding eyes, or the fact that Deadpool trusted this man more than he was comfortable admitting, but he choked out quietly, “I was.”

They walked on, steps falling into unison, as Wade continued to admit, “It was probably the first time I ever truly was.”

Peter smiled a tiny, pained, sympathetic smile and let his hand squeeze comfortingly around Deadpool’s bicep.

Despite the small gesture, Deadpool felt a huge weight lift off his chest.

Maybe there was something to this whole ‘talk about your feelings’ thing, afterall. Not that he’d go ringin’ up Doctor Phil when they got out of here or anything. He had _standards_ , okay?

But, it felt nice knowing he could talk to Peter about these things, if Wade felt up to it, _maybe_. He didn’t want to unleash too many of his demons onto the poor kid, considering he was already experiencing enough of them locked up in this place with Deadpool.

But it felt good knowing he had someone, where there hadn’t been someone in a long time.

Peter’s hand slipped from the grip it’d had on Deadpool, but he stayed supportive and close by his side, steps mirroring as they continued on towards the next door.

* * *

It wasn’t like Deadpool was eager for the next door.

That wasn’t it at all.

He was fully aware it could hold any number of his past horrors behind it, of hard hitting truths, and the coldblooded murder Wade had gladly acted upon throughout the years.

But seeing Vanessa had unlocked a tiny bit of something in his heart. Did calling it hope make him sound like too much of a pussy?

_{No.}_

**[Yes.]**

Alrighty, then.

Not hope but rather less trepidation at the idea of opening it if it might somehow lead him to seeing her smiling face, her infectious laugh, and her loving eyes again.

The door loomed ominously before them, but now it also held the prospect of seeing _her_.

Deadpool curled his gloved hands around the handle, turned, and pulled it open.

He gave an exaggerated wave at Peter to enter first, which resulted in the quirk of those plush lips as they ticked up into something small and secretive, a smile just for him. It caused something to twist up inside his ribcage, ending in a longing ache for things Deadpool knew he couldn’t have.

He followed Peter in, letting the door close behind him, but as the memory materialized around them, he suddenly felt every small, hopeful feeling he’d just been having leave him, sucked out Dementor style.

Although, the kiss of death had nothing on this place.

Deadpool felt frozen on the spot, heart stopping in a worrying seize, blood running cold as ice, terror gripping him in a tight embrace like an unwelcome old ‘friend’. Beside him, Peter must have felt whatever this memory was giving off, too, despite it not being his own, because he tensed and went into high alert, his senses reacting to the sinister vibe manifesting around them.

Every dark, cold, industrialized inch of this place reeked of death and trauma, of promises whispering no escape, of never feeling the warm kiss of the sun along your abused, tortured skin again. The floors, wet, always wet, glimmered dully with the reflection of the dodgy, low lighting. Deadpool wasn’t sure if the screams he was hearing were his own auditory hallucinations brought on by his sudden panic or the memory playing itself out; there had always been screams, whimpers, and pleas being called out like some endless loop. He still heard them at night, when his eyes became too heavy to keep open, and he dropped into an exhaustive sleep. He shivered, remembering the dampness that had always clung to the dank air, and swore the temperature in the room dropped a few degrees.

He’d been a glorified idiot to think he’d get to see Vanessa again past this damn door, just as he had when he’d first agreed to Weapon X’s plans. Because that wasn’t how Deadpool’s life went. The good things, however miniscule in his life, were always followed by cataclysmal bad things. It was pattern. It was routine. Why had he let himself forget that?

Wade Wilson had never been afforded such a thing as luck.

The room they were in was painfully familiar to him, more so than any other memory he’d been assaulted with thus far. It was the room that haunted his nightmares, when he slept, that was. It was what he saw flashes of behind his closed eyelids. It was the only memory that he hadn’t been able to get rid of; his time at Weapon X was not privy to being forgotten, or repressed, or forced into erasure through multiple bullets pumped straight into his amygdala.

It was there to stay, which meant that Wade knew exactly what was about to happen before it even played out.

The creak of wheels was the first thing he heard, over a moan from the curtained off section beside them. Then he heard his mouth, always his damn loud mouth, as he commented on the place as if he was at a five star hotel rather than a house of horrors.

“This place seems sanitary,” he critiqued facetiously. The men leading him across the building stayed stoic and silent, wheeling him into the closed off space to settle him next to the padded gurney.

“My first request is warmer hands,” he griped as they deposited him none-too-gently onto it.

But their rough treatment didn’t deter him, and he kept going, bitching and moaning as they manhandled him into straps that would keep him bound down.

Deadpool flexed his own arms, feeling the phantom pressure of the straps that weren’t likely to keep him down anymore.

“This is…” Peter’s voice left him in horror as it dawned on him just exactly _where_ they were. “This is Weapon X.”

It was a question as much as it was a statement, and one Deadpool didn’t have the voice to answer.

Suddenly a women, Angel Dust, of all fucking names, it was like they all got their alias’ from a random online generator during a prepubecent sleepover party, seemed to manifest out of the shadows to slam his head back along the less-than-padded bed. Wade groaned at her rough treatment, and Peter’s eyes fixated on little Miss PCP as she proceeded to put the final strap in place around his neck.

“What—” Peter watched her apprehensively as she hovered near past-Wade’s bedside. “What are they going to do?”

 _{Everything.}_ Yellow whimpered, who was always the more sensitive of the two voices in regards to these memories.

 **[Create your friendly neighborhood Deadpool** **_.]_ **White supplied unhelpfully.

Her hand shot out to cease his past selfs incessant commentary, and Peter twitched beside him, an aborted movement, as if he’d wanted to do something but stopped himself.

“Cure my cancer,” is what Deadpool went with, his tone low and deadly as he watched that _fuckhead_ walk into the room.

“Patience, Angel,” Francis cautioned her, hand raised to keep her at bay. “All in good time.”

His white lab coat swayed with his slow stride, and god, what a fucking joke this place had been. From the very beginning with the pedophile vibes Wade should have known better, he should have _known better_ , should have known nothing good would have come out of this, that this wouldn’t turn out like he thought it would.

He was cursed, remember? And wasn’t it just the ironic topper on the metaphorical cake that the cancer, in the end, had been a sweet blessing he’d ignored.

With each exchange between himself and that asshole, Deadpool’s breathing came quicker. His mind reeled, fighting with the knowledge that he’d killed Francis. He _knew_ that fucker was deader than dead, he’d killed him himself, but seeing the man stand in front of him, alive and whole and _ready to torture him_ , was making his body teem with nerves, and his hands twitched with the need to slice that smug mug right off those pretty boy shoulders.

Peter fidgeted beside him nervously as he listened to Francis’ “welcome speech”, inhaling sharply as he watched him inject Wade carelessly with a needle.

“—for it to work, we need to subject you to extreme stress.”

“Extreme stress,” Peter echoed uneasily, watching as Francis flicked a switch and two bags of something blue and iridescent illuminated behind Wade.

“I’m about to hurt you, Wade,” Francis told him casually, voice holding no emotion, and Peter’s fists clenched.

“Please tell me that asshole is dead,” Peter turned to look at him, face a twist of rage. Deadpool focused on keeping his breathing even so Peter wouldn’t notice how close he was to _freaking out_.

“As a doornail,” Wade replied in a forced, tight voice.

Peter’s gaze didn’t leave once he got his answer. Instead, he kept his focus on Deadpool for a moment, his eyes roaming over him worriedly, as if he could somehow sense the other man’s rising internal panic. He hesitated briefly, again as if he wanted to do something, but his eye’s flickered back to the commotion in front of them, as past-Wade’s insistent muffled voice came through the gag.

“T-thank you,” he gasped out once it was taken off. Then his eyes met Francis’. “You have something in your teeth. Right in the middle there.”

As Francis leaned over to look, past-Wade called him on it, laughter taunting like he’d played the best prank ever. Peter, beside him, let out a snicker of surprised laughter. The sound momentarily chased away the cold gripping at Deadpool’s chest like a vice. He’d gotten a few good ones in with Francis... it just had never done anything but make him want to hurt Wade more.

And he did. He always did.

Peter’s laugh died in his throat at Francis’ solemn promise, that Wade’s humor wouldn’t survive a place like this.

In a way, it hadn’t. It’d died and left, like most everything else in his life, only to come back twisted and perverse. His inside now matching the outside.

The repartee between them ended and even the Rosie O’Donnell quip couldn’t get Deadpool’s own lips to budge, permanently set in a hard line. He was trying so hard not to let a desperate whine escape, waiting patiently for this memory to play out, be over so that damn door could arrive and he could _get the fuck out of here_.

As tame as this particular moment of this place was, there was _nothing_ of his time here he wanted to relive.

It was almost a relief when the punch came, knocking his past self out cold in a spray of bloody unconsciousness. He’d come to after but only to endure horrors that escalated into nightmares that later turned into torturous hell that—well. _You,_ dear readers, know the rest. So his passing out meant the end of this hellacious memory. It also meant the arrival of the door to get them _out_ of this fucking place.

Wade let the muscles he hadn’t realized he’d been tensing tightly relax, and a relieved sigh passed his lips. His masked eyes searched around, waiting for the door to appear as, clearly, the memory was over. But it never showed and there was no warning before the scene in front of them was shimmering like a mirage on the horizon, bleeding into a different yet eerily similar room.

Deadpool’s breathing sped up. It came quicker and quicker until his lungs prickled from inhaling too much oxygen and, at the same time, not enough; he felt exactly how his past self looked before him.

Trapped. Suffocating.

Deadpool couldn’t stop his erratic breathing this time. There was no pretending. There was no playing it cool.

Peter looked alarmed beside him, either from the memory, Deadpool’s reaction, or the fact that it was the first time a second memory played out unbidden; Deadpool couldn’t be sure which. He wasn’t sure of anything except that he needed to get out of this damn memory.

Because this would surely break him again, this moment that was the very same one that had shattered him into a million broken pieces the first time.

The glass chamber holding his past self seemed alarmingly large before them, and his screams echoed off the walls as Francis left him there, with oxygen receding till it was just enough to keep him alive, _barely_.

They echoed loudly in his ears and in his brain.

Echoed from his own lips.

He whipped his katanas out, chest heaving from his escalating panic attack, mind set on attacking that retreating back.

He _hadn’t_ succeeded in killing Francis, after all. His mind had played another giant trick on him, and that fucker was alive and well. He was here, in this place, having his fun reliving Wade’s torture. Even though Wade was physically standing and watching everything happen, he was also _in there_ , gasping an inch away from suffocation: he was still a pawn in Francis’ game, and he had to _kill the fucker_. _Right. Now._

He stepped forward deliberately, ready to charge, ears ringing, when a solid force knocked into him. Deadpool pitched forward unexpectedly, his weapons knocked from his hands. They clattered to the floor, but he barely heard it over the rushing of his own boiling blood in his ears.

Was this a trick? A trap? Was Miss Congeniality right behind him, stopping Deadpool from succeeding in killing her boss a second time?

He strained against the fierce grip that locked around his arms and torso, that forced him back into a solid chest. No matter how much he struggled, the hold wouldn’t let up, but he didn’t give up. He couldn’t give up. Deadpool would never allow himself to be helpless again. Isn’t that what he had promised to himself? Isn’t that what the voices belittled him for every day?

He’d had a moment of weakness, of allowing himself to be hopeful, and look where it had gotten him...

With a face he no longer recognized and a heart all but ripped out of him the day Vanessa died.

Alone but for voices who did nothing other than remind him how little he had to live for, urging him to end it all.

And when he inevitably gave in to them, he couldn’t even do _that_ properly!

“-pool!”

The ringing in his ears was disorienting but the voice that cut through it sounded familiar.

“Deadpool!”

He strained his neck to turn but the person holding him took it as a sign of him fighting the hold again.

“Wade, _hey,_ ” Peter’s urgent, equally concerned voice finally registered through to him, and Deadpool’s fight left him all at once in a slump. He fell like deadweight into the frame of arms there to catch him. “That’s it; it’s just me. I’ve got you.”

Peter easily guided them to the floor.

Deadpool’s breathing was still fast and irregular, head still ringing as the voices screamed obscenities at him for missing the chance, _again_ , to kill Francis, but Peter’s solid embrace was like a beacon to his crazy ship in the night. It lured Wade off the ledge he’d been teetering on, and with every swipe of Peter’s reassuring hands up and down his arms, the jagged breathing leaving Deadpool relaxing somewhat.

That was until he registered his own gasping breaths coming from the oxygen deprivation chamber and the beeping from the monitor spiking as his mutation _finally,_ of fucking course, _finally_ kicked in.

Peter noticed, of course he did. He brought one hand up to rest over Deadpool’s leather clad ear to block out the noise as he leaned against his broad back to talk low and reassuringly into the other.

“It’s just a memory,” Peter reminded him in a soothing voice, the hand around his front gripping at muscles through leather, “ _this_ is real, Wade. You did it. You got that fucker, remember? He’s six feet under, and this is in the past. You’ve escaped it.”

He hadn’t though. He’d been living with daily torture ever since he’d been put into that fucking thing.

The reminder of that went through him as his own painful screams from within that chamber echoed throughout the room. Deadpool whimpered as he vividly remembered every inch of his skin breaking open and scarring over, as his cancer kept itself painfully at bay forever. Trapping him, like a mosquito encased in amber _without_ the cool dino DNA.

Deadpool shuddered as his own pain-filled yells met his ears in between Peter’s comforting words. He was pulled back tighter against Peter’s chest, and Wade now shook between Peter’s sprawled legs, guard down, hands digging painfully into his own thighs so he didn’t go find Francis or claw his own ears out.

He realized Peter had resumed talking, his voice pitched low in the semblance of a secretive whisper but quicker now, as if to make sure Deadpool wouldn’t focus on anything but what he was saying.

“—you know that? He can’t hurt you anymore, and besides, he’d have to get through me first. I wouldn’t let him hurt you again, Wade. Enough people have hurt you in the past; I won’t allow them to hurt you now. I promise. You hear me? _I promise._ ”

He wanted to believe it with all his cancer-filled heart. But promises, he’d found out the hard way, were nothing but a way to end up completely eviscerated, and yet, Deadpool found he _really_ wanted to believe this one, even if it would inevitably end up like all the others—broken.

Because if there was one thing Deadpool was good at, it was getting hurt, by his own hands and other people's.

Peter’s lips ran over the leather of Deadpool’s ear as he talked, causing a buzz like electricity before a brewing storm to thrum along his skin, and the promise seemed to melt through, all the way down to his bones. The full shape of them was obvious as they moved, as Peter talked with urgency, and it almost allowed him to pretend those lips _were_ running over the shell of his ear, like his mask was off and his face was exposed. Like this was some kind of intimate moment between the two of them rather than Peter trying his hardest to keep Deadpool from riding off the rails of his own personal crazy train.

Deceivingly lean arms bracketed his chest now, and Deadpool had the asinine thought of what they must look like; him, a wall of leather and muscle, leaning back into the arms of someone who looked like he wasn’t more than a buck fifty when wet.

Though Deadpool had no doubts of how powerful the man behind him was, looks aside. He’d seen Spider-Man lift a car like it was nothing but a stepping stone before. He’d seen Peter pluck men with bulging, threatening muscles up by their collars and all but throw them into the awaiting arms of justice. That superstrength had even made more than a passing cameo in Deadpool’s fantasies. Hell, it’d been its own damn headliner.

And to think those same powerful arms were now wrapped around Deadpool…

This was the closest in proximity they’d ever been, besides fighting crime together or sitting together eating.

 _{We’ll have to teeter on the brink of insanity more often!}_ came Yellow’s eager voice, apparently back from where he’d retreated after helping to instigate Deadpool’s manic episode, so different from earlier when he’d been readily slinging harsh insults alongside White’s.

Deadpool shuddered again, but this time, it was from the thought of the man behind him. He didn’t register anything now besides his own thundering heart, and the body pressed up along his back. Peter had perfectly distracted him from the memory, even if he hadn’t intended for it to work quite in this way.

Peter’s hands loosened from around Deadpool’s chest to slide down his arms until they stopped where gloved hands were still digging painfully into his own thighs. The screams from the chamber had died down, past Wade likely passed out from the pain for the moment, but even the blissful quiet wasn’t able to take away his anxiousness from being in this place. Despite knowing the door could arrive any moment now that the memory was over, his panic curled up tight inside him like an anxious cat.

Deadpool’s breathing slowed as Peter’s hands started to caress the back of his gloved ones, gentle and soft. It directed his final thoughts away from the triggering memory and instead shifted them completely to Peter behind him. He turned his head and nearly jumped when he was met by Peter’s molten gaze.

He wasn’t exactly sure what Peter was looking at. There was nothing but the black and red of his suit and the whites of his masked eyes. Nothing new, nothing Peter hadn’t seen a hundred times before. When designing his suit, Wade had made sure to make the mask as featureless as possible, not wanting anyone to know what really lay underneath.

But, for Deadpool, he had _everything_ to look at when it came to Peter. Finally.

There was the arch of Peter’s dark eyebrows and, this close up, a small thin scar that ran noticeably through one. He had eyelashes people would _pay for_ , thick and long. His eyes continued down to an adorable nose, and a smattering of freckles running across it indicated he might actually see the sun once in a while outside of the mask he always wore. And his lips...

God, those lips.

Pink and full and—

Deadpool’s breath left him shakily as Peter’s very tempting tongue ran across them, leaving them glistening with wetness. He couldn’t help honing in on that retreating tongue as it left him with the biggest urge to chase it.

Deadpool glanced back up only to see Peter’s own gaze drop down, too.

_{He wants to kiss us!!}_

**[With a mask on?]** White sounded skeptical.

Deadpoo shivered, from Yellow’s shrill squeal or Peter’s stare, he wasn’t sure. Despite White’s valid point, he couldn’t help but want to rip his mask off, all the way off, and close the distance between them. If he was met with ego-crippling rejection, he could always blame his actions on his trauma if he somehow read this situation wrong, right?

 **[Sure, blame** us **for** your **issues.]**

_{You’re such a Debbie Downer, White!}_

Deadpool ignored the sourpuss attitude exuding from White and made to move his hands up, to remove his mask, to cradle Peter’s face, honestly, he’d never know what he meant to do because in that exact moment Peter’s eyes slid over to look at something behind Deadpool’s shoulder.

The mood was broken instantly by Peter as he cleared his throat and announced softly, perhaps a tad (although that could be Deadpool projecting) regretfully, “Door’s finally here. Let’s get out of this place.”

Peter helped Deadpool up like the gentleman he was, collecting the katanas that lay forgotten on the floor. He handed them over to Deadpool, who took them back absentmindedly. Conflicted, confused thoughts swirled around in Wade’s mind, and although the thought of leaving this memory behind should have been a sharp relief, he wanted nothing more than to be back on that floor in between Peter’s thighs.

* * *

Something had glitched in the Matrix.

Or maybe they were just getting closer to being free from this fucking place.

Instead of releasing them out into the endless, boring white, the door had brought them straight into another memory.

A memory that included both of them.

Peter grunted as he ran into a hard wall of muscle and katanas that made up Deadpool’s back when the suited-up man stopped abruptly.

“Deadpool,” Peter chuckled nervously from behind him. “What is it?”

Peter’s head peeked around Deadpool, and he made a noise from behind him as he noticed the memory playing out.

The door had let them out on top of a building, and in front of them, they both sat, feet dangling from the ledge of one of their favorite spots, chowing down on a bursting bag of food settled on the floor of the roof between them.

To the younger man, it must look like nothing special of a memory, Deadpool imagined. It looked like just another patrol night for the two of them, one that ended in a few good deeds and the suggestion of a bite to eat after.

But Deadpool remembered this night clearly. He wouldn’t ever forget it.

It’d started out special to him, as it was the first time Spider-Man had ever willingly texted Deadpool to come patrol with him. Up until that moment, it had always been Deadpool making an effort to seek out Spider-Man (which wasn’t hard, honestly, with Webs leaving a decent trail to follow) or Spider-Man graciously allowing him to tag along after Deadpool would send out a barrage of rapid fire texts that threatened to freeze the superhero’s phone with each incoming notification.

But this night _he’d_ reach out to _Deadpool_.

Bleeding heart, Deadpool cursed to himself, how much more of this could he fucking take? It felt like a visceral punch, and something clenched painfully within his chest as he realized this wasn’t just a throw away memory shared between the two of them; this was distinctly another one of _his_ memories.

A good one gone sour.

But Peter would never know that, and it seemed he didn’t, as he stepped around Deadpool to watch the memory play out, arms crossed casually.

“Hard to guess who’s memory it is when we’re both in it,” Peter joked, but it fell flat, and his shoulders seemed tense as he looked from themselves to Deadpool beside him. He raised his eyebrows speculatively. “This must mean we’re getting closer. This was fairly recent.”

Just a handful of years ago. A little over a year after they’d met, Deadpool thought, but didn’t say.

He knew because it was the moment he’d given up any and all hope of ever attaining Spider-Man.

Now don’t get it twisted, that wasn’t to say a certain ex-mercenary didn't still adore his spider or even flirt endlessly with him to the point of downright lewdness.

It _also_ didn’t mean he’d been delusional enough to think that there'd been a _real_ possibility of having him, either.

White cleared his throat pointedly in the back of his mind.

Okay, maybe there'd been a _bit_ of a delusion there, Deadpool could admit.

It was just… Wade Wilson was a persistent man. He played the long game, because, hell, that’s all he had now, wasn’t it? He’d hoped that in his changed ways and growing friendship with Spider-Man, the man’s opinion of him, his _feelings_ towards Deadpool, might sway, just a _smidge_ , _maybe_ , into kissing territory.

Deadpool could get down with some Spidey smooches, even if that was all he ever got.

He might _want_ Spider-Man’s heart, after all, but he didn’t _need_ it.

And through their journey from acquaintanceship to partnering together, there had been times Deadpool imagined Spider-Man wanted more. When he started to offer unnecessary piggy-back rides to Deadpool and told him to hold on tight, or touched him on the shoulder to tell him he’d done a great job.

When he laughed at Deadpool's ridiculous jokes during a fight, or when he accepted invites for food and started _suggesting them_ , even, sitting closer and closer each time until there was barely an arm's length between the two of them.

Then this happened, his initiation for them to meet up, despite the countless times he’d come at Deadpool’s offerance.

But this night…

This night made Wade realize that it was just another thing he’d let his insane mind conjure up to make himself feel better: he actually believed that someone as perfect, honorable, and kind as Spider-Man could love someone like _him_. Deadpool. Wade Wilson. The ex-mercenary with more than a bowl full of crazy and a sky-high kill count to match.

After this night, Deadpool had made sure to keep his distance. Not _literally_ , of course. There was no going back once he’d tasted an _ounce_ of that man’s friendship because Deadpool craved wholesome like a hole in the head.

Yellow snickered. { _Ohh, good one!}_

But it made Deadpool remember his place. He was never going to be the redeemed antihero, revered by all and wanted by many, nor would he be wanted by Spider-Man at all.

He knew what he’d always be in the eyes of those around them: Spider-Man’s off-the-wall, watch-your-back-with-that-one deranged charity case.

He was crazy, not _deaf_. He’d heard the whispers throughout Shield.

Whispers as he passed that sounded like _unhinged_ and _barely controlled_ and _I don’t know who the hell would trust a man like that._

Spider-Man had, and that’s what Deadpool’s crazy mind and even crazier heart had latched onto because kindness tasted like the sweetest drop of water to as socially parched a man as Wade, but it was a pipedream, a delusion, just another familiar deadend.

Spider-Man’s kindness may have extended to him, but that was all it was: kindness, some bad-guy asskicking, and the occasional bite to eat.

So Deadpool snatched his cancerous, patched-up ticker back and vowed to keep the affairs of his heart _out_ of crime fighting.

He doubted Spider-Man even noticed. After all, Deadpool’s text messages were still ridiculously suggestive and flirty (he just loved that eggplant emoji!), and he still made inappropriate, salacious comments in the heat of crime fighting (who wouldn’t with an ass like that in spandex?). But the parts of himself he’d been slowly opening up closed, and he realized being heart-felt and earnest only ever got him torn apart.

Been there, done _that_.

But this was the memory _before_ that realization and the subsequent crash that followed.

This was still hopeful Deadpool, the one who was so keen on proving to Spider-Man he could be a better man because he thought, somehow, that would make a difference. Well, after this night he knew it never would. Wade still strived to be a better man (because he craved Spider-Man’s company and praise like an addict), but he just knew better now. Nothing could erase his past. It would follow him like a bad stench for the rest of time.

The Deadpool in front of them took a bite from his taco and leaned sideways to rummage around in the greasy bag.

“Here, Spides, I think I got you one with that carne you like so much. Doesn’t seem like that one is doing it for ya.”

“Huh?” Spider-Man murmured absentmindedly as he turned to see Deadpool holding out another wrapped taco. The one held between his gloved hands was nibbled on at best, and he set it aside to grab the offered one. “Thanks, ‘Pool.”

His voice was quiet, reserved, and Wade frowned. Had Spidey sounded _that_ dejected when he’d lived this memory the first time? He couldn’t remember…

**[That’s because you’re always too wrapped up in your own head.]**

“Are you implying I’m self-absorbed?” Deadpool muttered to White, affronted.

 **[No, I’m implying you’re** crazy **.]**

Peter’s eyes flickered over to him, but eventually focused back on their past selves. He knew well enough by now to let non sequiturs lie around Deadpool.

The ex-merc ignored both White’s comment and Peter’s brief, inquisitive gaze as he studied the memory before him intently. What else had he potentially missed?

Spider-Man unwrapped the taco slowly, with none of his usual enthusiasm toward food.

“You okay, Webs?” Past Deadpool turned to ask an unusually quiet Spider-Man after he’d finished chewing. “School going all right? You know I’ll rough up a prof for you pro bono.”

 _{See!}_ Yellow exclaimed. _{We’re not completely self-absorbed; we can think about others!}_

 **[Oh, my apologies.]** And if White had eyes he was definitely rolling them. **[I wasn’t aware peak consideration was asking a man if he’s okay without spraying bits of half masticated meat and tortilla at him.]**

Spider-Man nodded and lifted his taco, voice sounding a tad forced as he reassured, “No, everything’s fine—I’m fine, DP. No roughing up my physics professor again, please.”

“I told you Webs, that wasn’t me,” Deadpool dismissed, taking another bite.

Past Peter gave a weak smile, but Peter beside him snorted softly.

That had been _one time_ , and it was because the fucker had the audacity to fail Peter after he missed a test to _save the city_. He didn’t know, couldn’t know, of course, but that didn’t stop Deadpool from being affronted on Spider-man’s behalf when he told him. He’d been distraught, rambling about GPA’s and some guy named Dean and his list.

That was enough for Deadpool, who had a list of his own, and the man was now on it. The ex-mercenary _might_ have used some of his old skills to tail the academic bastard, and he _might_ have made sure he ran into the Professor one early morning while he was on his usual coffee route.

All allegedly, of course.

Deadpool’s gaze focused back on Spider-Man as he took a meager bite before he turned his gaze yet again to the glittering sea of lit up buildings sprawled before them. It would have been beautiful if either one of them had actually been paying attention.

Spider-Man’s answer had sounded a bit hollowed, not quite as genuine as it normally did.

Wade frowned, crossing his arms, puzzled. He glanced at Peter beside him, but the man was looking at himself, watching as he mechanically went about enjoying some of the best tacos in the county.

He’d been so worked up about Spider-Man reaching out that day, he’d even pre-ordered the food. After a swift and successful night of crime fighting, Wade had traveled to the other side of town to pick up the tacos he knew the spandexed hero liked before meeting him back at this spot. In his excitement, had he missed something obvious, something that had clearly upset his friend?

Deadpool’s gaze slid to his Peter beside him, who was frowning slightly as the memory continued. As if he, too, was remembering something from this memory.

_{We could ask him?}_

**[Absolutely not!]**

_{Why not? It seems like something is bothering him, too!}_

**[This was ages ago, idiot!]**

Deadpool let their bickering continue, trying to decide the best course of action. Did he ask Peter? It _was_ rather long ago, but it seemed like the boy remembered something from this night, if the tense line of his shoulders was anything to go by. Even if he brushed it aside, just like he had all those years ago, at least Deadpool had tried. He wanted to know what he’d managed to miss that night. He’d thought something had been upsetting Spidey…

Deadpool had assumed it was _him._ The thought that it might have been something else had never occurred to him before.

But Deadpool hesitated. What if it _had_ been something he’d done, and Peter was just remembering it all over again? Clearly, he was as agitated about it the second time as he had been the first.

Yellow and White’s voices shouted in his mind as they argued and contradicted each other’s advice.

He wanted to know.

No, he _needed_ to know.

Deadpool sucked in a breath and steeled himself to ask.

But Peter beat him to it, or rather, past Peter did as his soft voice echoed in the quiet between the, “Hey, Deadpool?”

Deadpool swallowed before turning towards the man beside him. “Yeah?”

Spider-Man took a deep breath, then he let it out. A few seconds passed, and he seemed to deflate as he shook his head, “Nothing, nevermind.”

Wade’s nonexistent eyebrows furrowed under his mask, and it was clear that certain parts of this memory had not stayed fresh in his mind in the years that had passed. He hardly remembered Spider-Man’s unusual quietness or his cut off sentences. He only remembered the blunt sting of rejection, like a dull knife to the heart.

Moments of silence passed between them until he heard his past self interject softly, “ _Hey_. You sure you're okay there, baby boy?”

The air left Deadpool’s lungs in a whoosh as he watched himself lean over, hand extended, invading Spider-Man’s space to brush something off the apple of Spider-Man’s check, right under where his mask lay tugged up.

It was like watching a wreck in slow motion, knowing there was nothing you could do but close your eyes tightly until impact or keep them wide open to watch every terrifying moment of it.

Deadpool wanted to do both, but mostly he wanted to go over there and slice his own fingers off for ever thinking they’d be wanted on such perfect skin.

His eyes stayed open and unblinking behind his mask.

The smooth leather didn’t even get the chance to connect with soft, warm skin before the hero flinched away, the back of his own hand coming up to wipe hastily at the glistening wetness found there.

“Y-yeah,” Spider-Man choked out. “I think this one just had hot sauce on it, that’s all.”

A small, forced laugh fell from his lips.

It felt just as wrong as it had the first time Deadpool had heard it.

“You know I can’t handle that stuff,” past Peter reminded Deadpool. It was a fact Deadpool, then and now, had indeed known. “It’s just making my eyes water, that’s all.”

His hand hovered, trapped in the almost-moment between them, before he snatched it back and curled protectively into himself.

“Sorry,” came Deadpool's quiet, regretful voice, taken on the breeze between buildings. “I must have forgotten.”

He hadn’t.

Deadpool had made sure with Señorita Rita that there was to be no hot sauce anywhere _near_ his order. If his baby boy didn’t like it, Deadpool didn’t, either.

Spider-Man sent the reassuring curl of a half-smile Deadpool’s way, but it looked false, forced. “It’s okay.”

No, it hadn’t been then, and it wasn’t now, either.

That flinch had shattered an already broken man and reminded Deadpool that no matter what, he would always be a monster in the reflections of everyone's eyes. That it didn’t matter how much he tried, how different he became; he would still be someone no one wanted a touch from.

Wade could do nothing but stand by and watch. Instead of sadness, like he predicted he’d feel, a small ball of anger coiled deep within his chest.

Deadpool was the king of innuendo, and perhaps the occasional unwanted touch here and there, but he knew what _no_ meant. He might be a monster but not _that_ kind. He _killed_ those kinds of monsters. If Spider-Man was repulsed by him, didn’t want him, that’s all he’d had to say. Wade could be a good boy and maintain _boundaries_.

**[Are you sure about that?]**

He ignored White as the memory of their past selves melted away in front of them, one moment there, the next gone, leaving them alone on the roof. The whistling of the wind hadn’t left, however, and it stirred the air as it whipped around them.

He took a deep breath, trying not to let his anger escalate. He couldn’t remember a time he’d been mad at Spider-Man, not even when they argued in the beginning about morality and killing and _inherent goodness_. Peter had the ability to get his point across without raising his voice, and Deadpool didn’t have it in him to raise _his_. Not at Spider-Man, anyway.

But right now his anger thrummed through him, and even though the memory was gone, it replayed itself over in Deadpool’s mind.

Why had Peter lied to him that night?

He’d gotten away with the lie before because he’d been too distraught at Spider-Man’s reaction towards him to really think about it, but watching it now from an outsider perspective brought questions he hadn’t thought to ask before.

Why, Deadpool thought to himself pointedly, if Peter was so repulsed by him, had he made it seem easy earlier when he’d embraced him, held him close while he reassured Deadpool he’d always be there for him?

So either something changed after that night, or Peter was the best damn liar he’d ever met.

Deadpool had thought himself good at smelling bullshit, considering the amount he spouted himself, but he supposed anything could smell sweet enough if you wished it to be true.

He turned to the man beside him, the demand for answers on the tip of his tongue, but one look at Peter’s face and it caught in his throat.

Peter looked stricken.

His hands were fisted at his sides, back rigid and shoulders tense.

He glanced up at Deadpool, and the lights of the buildings around them shone in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Deadpool,” Peter apologized.

A lead weight replaced where Deadpool’s stomach used to be.

So it _had_ been as he feared, Wade thought.

Peter had lied that night to protect Deadpool from the exact thoughts that had ended up consuming him, anyway.

Spider-Man may fight alongside him, might willingly share a meal with him, but there was room for nothing more in the man’s life when it came to Deadpool. He didn’t want a touch, let alone a kiss, much less anything _else_ Deadpool had practically offered up (multiple times) on a silver platter.

_{But then… why did he—}_

**[Because we’re pathetic!]** White snarled harshly. **[And he needs us to help him escape this place. Talking us down from a destructive spiral was more out of self-preservation than some delusional idea of him being into us!]**

Deadpool shuddered at the cruel, honest truth.

Spider-Man had never offered anything more than partnership to Deadpool. He’d never even officially called them friends—not until Deadpool had. He’d assumed that, after all they’d been through, they’d at least had _that_. But everything else was fabricated by _him_ ; his delusions and wants and desires were all shoved into Spider-Man’s face.

It disgusted Peter, clearly.

“Deadpool, I—”

The door decided they were ready to exit, making itself known, and Deadpool strode toward it without a second thought. He wanted out of this fucking place. He’d never imagined his daring rescue would include him getting flayed alive by his own past memories, where all they reminded him of was how much of a fucking failure of a human being he was.

He’d failed as a son.

He’d failed as a fiance.

He’d failed as a superhero.

He’d failed as a friend.

He’d failed. He’d failed. He’d failed.

It all spun along in his head, threatening to take him to that dark precipice he often teetered on.

The voices mocked him as the images gutted him.

His dad slurring while hitting his mother. Her screams.

His own as he turned into the monster that had always been lurking underneath his skin.

Vanessa’s sweet, addictive laugh, choked off by blood.

Peter’s physical flinch away from his touch.

It was all too much.

He turned the knob sharply, wrenching open the door, and if it had been a real door it likely would have been pulled from its hinges. Peter’s pleas echoed in the still night of the memory behind him as Wade thrust himself into the new one without hesitance, this time without waiting for the superhero to follow.

“Deadpool, wait! Please, I can explain—”

* * *

A sickening horror filled Deadpool as he stumbled through the next door only to see his own self materialize in front of him.

God, no.

This felt like his own personal hell at this point, nine layers of Deadpool’s failures for up close viewing pleasure. He didn’t know if he could take anymore; he already felt the darkness lurking, ready to strike at any moment. One wrong move, and he would go spiraling down, Alice in Wonderland style.

He could not let Peter see him like this.

Deadpool turned back towards the open door, where Peter was making his way through. He grabbed a little too roughly at Peter’s shoulder’s in an attempt to stall his entry.

“Listen, Deadpool,” Peter gripped at his forearms. “I’m sorry. That night, it—it wasn’t about you. Let me ex—”

“We gotta go back,” Deadpool barely heard what Peter was saying as he pleaded, a tad hysterically. “Let’s—Let’s find another door.”

Peter’s eyes widened at Deadpool’s frantic tone, and his grip on leather-clad forearms tightened as he said regretfully, “I don’t know _how_.”

Deadpool eyes flickered up over Peter hopefully. He’d gladly go back through the door to that last memory if it meant he could avoid this one.

It had already disappeared.

_Fuck._

Deadpool whimpered.

No, not _him_ Deadpool, but his past self, behind him. Peter cocked his head, damn that superhero hearing, and his attention went from Deadpool, to the memory playing beyond him.

Beyond him, a past Deadpool stood, gripping the sink as he fought with the demons inside his head. Every grotesque, unmasked, uncovered piece of his skin on display but for the worn hello kitty towel wrapped around his hips from his earlier shower. The mirror he usually kept covered was bare, but his head was down as if it would physically pain him to look into it.

There was nothing Wade could do, nothing he could say, absolutely _nothing_ to stop from Peter seeing one of his spectacularly lowest lows. He let go of Peter in a daze.

**[Just another regularly scheduled breakdown.]**

He felt that familiar tightening feeling in his chest, the one he usually chased with a bullet, and as his breathing quickened, the darkness crept along the edges of his vision.

“Hey, woah,” Peter grabbed at Deadpool where he swayed, but Deadpool shook him off, putting distance between them as his need to grab a gun and end this misery magnified. His fingers spasmed as he resisted the urge.

“ _Spider-Man says he’s not bothered by our scars,”_ a disembodied voice filled the room, a twisted parody of Deadpool’s, pitched higher with eccentric inflection, vowels curved wildly.

_{Do I really sound like that?!}_

**[Worse** **_.]_ **

_How the fuck_ —? Deadpool cradled his head, fingers biting in past the leather, feeling all of the word insane as the voices usually inside his head sounded around him, audible to Peter’s ears.

“ **It sure looked like he cared today,** ” White’s deeper voice countered nastily.

“Who…?” Peter’s question trailed off as he looked around, baffled, and the poor man _should_ be baffled. There was no reasonable explanation for why anyone heard voices in their head, except for one, and Deadpool had always curbed his crazy around the other man, as much as he could, but there was no pretending just how fucked in the head Deadpool was now.

Wade had imagined what his hell might look like, but it didn’t hold a candle to this.

“Shut up,” his past self uttered harshly, downhearted, finally wiping at the condensation that had accumulated on the mirror. He took a moment to look at himself before his eyes averted. "He’s somehow always managed to keep his food down when I’m with him.”

“ **He might be able to tolerate your presence while eating, but he certainly can’t stand your touch.”**

“ _Maybe it wasn’t—”_

“ **Grow up,”** White’s scathing voice cut off Yellow abruptly. **“Let’s not** pretend **we’re not a monster when we’re perfect at being one. This is who we are.** This! **You two might be delusional, but I’m not. Spider-Man will never want our touch, just like he’ll never share our feelings, because who could ever love a monster?”**

If Deadpool had anything to say back to that, he kept it to himself. He stayed silent as he looked back up to his reflection, until the anger vibrating inside him unleashed. He bellowed suddenly, a shout that had Peter jumping. It was a yell filled with pain and anger as his bare fist went through the mirror and didn’t stop. Again and again and again it struck until shards of glass along with blood scattered across the bathroom tiles. Until his hand was pulverized, more glass than flesh. Deadpool watched himself as he spiraled into full destructive mode, not only on the bathroom, but on himself.

He tore at the shower curtain just as he tore at his own skin, and he kicked at the waste basket before slamming his own head along the wall in a roar of rage, leaving a bright red smear. The voices shouted and cackled and encouraged in a volume that had Peter holding his own ears.

It took less than a minute for the bathroom to be decimated, and along with it, Deadpool assumed, Peter’s view of him.

A similar feeling, one like a consuming black hole, had started inside of Deadpool as he watched himself. Seeing Peter flinch back from his craziness was the final blow. The itch to grab his weapons was unbearable. He couldn’t take it anymore, what (in)sane man could? The damn Avengers had failed to rescue them, and he couldn’t take another door. He _just. Fucking couldn’t._

Peter's worried gaze met Deadpool, about to say something before his eyes widened in realization at what the other man was about to do.

“ _No_ —” He started towards Deadpool, hands outstretched as if hoping his web shooters would materialise, but it was futile. He was too far out of reach, unable to stop Deadpool from bringing the gun up to his head and giving himself a little reboot.

As past Deadpool continued his cataclysmic destruction, Wade pulled the trigger.

Just as the bullet blasted its path through his temporal lobe, he saw the young superhero’s eyes roll back into his head, and the last thought Deadpool had before darkness enveloped him was of Peter.

* * *

(some collective scenes from this chapter)


	3. A Spider Loved

Peter woke, similar to waking from a dream, but somehow not at all.

It was familiar in the way he felt floaty, unconnected to reality, his mind trading one state for another. But he was confused, far more so than when waking from a simple night of rest, and a throbbing pain emanated from the base of his skill.

He felt lost and groggy, eyes blinking against a bright light, mind unfocused. Peter hovered there for a moment, on the precipice of lucidity, until finally the ache of his body registered along with the steady sound of beeping, and Tony’s encouraging voice reached his ears.

“That’s it, kid, come on.”

Suddenly, he was gasping awake.

“N-no,” the word clawed its way up and out of his throat like a wild thing, dry from disuse. Words left him in a painful croak, but they were all the same, repeated in a frantic litany from his mind to his mouth.

“No, _no_ , D-deadp—”

Tony swam into focus, then back out again, but his scowl was deep enough to see despite Peter’s blurry vision. “Deadpool is the least of your worries, Pete. He’ll be fine. You, on the other hand, are severely malnourished and dehydrated.”

Peter frowned, his brain attempting to connect the words he was hearing to the reality of his situation. He’d been fine; he’d been with Deadpool, he’d—

Tony’s paternal voice continued, softer now with concern. “You had us worried, kid.”

A hand gripped his shoulder lightly, comfortingly, but it reminded him of something else, of someone else, gripping him desperately.

Peter hardly heard Tony’s next words. He made to get up, but hands held him back, and it must be bad, his condition, if he was that easily held at bay.

“No,” Peter rasped out again, struggling. “Deadpool, I left, he—”

“Wilson will be fine,” and there was the Captain now, standing at his other side. Peter blinked, and his gaze went up, up, up. Steve was standing strong and tall, hands on his utility belt in his signature Captain America pose, and Peter struggled to focus on him.

Peter’s eyes slid just behind him, in the spot where Steve’s broadness tapered into a narrower waist and made out the familiar red and black of–

“ _Deadpool.”_

The sighting was all it took. Peter used his remaining strength to brush away the hands holding him back and shouldered his way off the uncomfortable contraption he was laid out upon. His bare feet hit the ground a little harder than he anticipated, and he swayed forward, into Steve’s arms.

Peter hissed at the bright pain along his inner arm, the IV tearing free. A machine was trilling a steady flatline from where the monitoring patches had ripped off in his movement. Peter cared about neither. He attempted to stand, right himself, but his legs wobbled, weakened from lack of nutrition and use.

Steve held him firmly but awkwardly. They'd never been super close, the distance held partially by Peter’s hero worship, but mostly from the Captain’s inability to see him as anything but a kid, even now. Tony may call him kid, but Steve Rogers treated him like one. So, while they were co-workers through and through, they had never gotten as familiar with each other as some of the others on the team. But Steve was still the Captain, and he would never let one of his teammates fall.

It honestly didn’t matter whose arms he was in at the moment, however, or the breeze Peter felt along his backside as the gown he’d been placed in fell open. All he was worried about, all he cared about, was getting to Deadpool. Deadpool, who had been about to kill himself before Peter had left, before Peter got out.

 _How_ had Peter gotten out?

Or, better yet, why hadn't Deadpool?

Why hadn't Deadpool awakened with him… had something gone wrong? Was it because he’d managed to shoot himself in a dream state? Had he gotten sucked into another memory?

Escalating, worried thoughts swirled in his mind like a sandstorm, conjuring up a thousand images of Deadpool, alone, left to relive his memories by himself in a white, uncaring void.

He shouldn’t be in there alone, not with his lifetime's worth of trauma to play out, not without Peter.

Peter pushed forward, away from Cap, reaching for Deadpool who, he noticed a little more clearly, was sprawled out on a makeshift table.

“Wade,” Peter whispered hoarsely, vocal cords giving up.

Rogers kept a steady hold on him, but let him look his fill.

Hawkeye was standing beside Deadpool, hovering at his shoulder.

Deadpool would have made some weird angel-hawk-hybrid on the shoulder joke at this moment, Peter thought rather absurdly.

The archer’s forehead creased as he looked down at the still-unconscious man, but when he glanced up at Peter he smiled reassuringly.

“I’ll make sure he comes out of it okay,” Hawkeye told him solemnly. “I promise.”

Maybe it was because his body felt shaky and weak, nothing like he was used to since that fateful spider bite, or maybe it was the trust he’d found in Hawkeye, but with that promise echoing in his ears, Peter’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped, deadweight, into Steve’s arms.

* * *

The wind rushed in Peter’s ears as he whipped through the city, swinging as powerfully and as fast as he could to Deadpool’s apartment.

The man had many hideouts, not all of them known by Peter, but he knew Deadpool was particularly fond of this place. They’d hung out there a few times on days when they were too exhausted to sit on rooftops or if the weather was too bad to spend outside.

When Peter found out he had more than one apartment, he’d asked Deadpool why he’d only ever seen this one.

“Because,” Deadpool had told him as he cracked open a soda, sliding it over to Peter before getting one for himself, “it’s the only one presentable enough for you, Spidercakes.”

Peter had scowled at the nickname, but he hadn’t asked again. Deadpool's apartment was messy at best and disastrous at worst. He might have wondered what the others must look like, but he didn’t particularly want to find out.

He let loose another web, the memory fading as he curved around a building, hoping beyond hope that Deadpool was still in the area.

Peter hadn’t had time to ask if Deadpool had been assigned to any new Shield missions. Hadn’t had time for anything, really, other than plotting his escape, finding some clothes, and making a break for it because, _technically_ , Peter hadn’t been cleared to leave medbay.

He was entirely fine, _honestly_ , everyone just continued to treat him with kid gloves it seemed.

Although, when he’d said that to Tony a few days after being rescued, he’d been met with a dry look.

“You got _kidnapped,_ Peter, and had intense surgery _twice_ ,” his tone equally dry. “Let us make sure you’re okay, all right? You were nearly _dead_ thanks to those good for nothing, so-called scientists…”

He’d grumbled on, ignoring Peter’s protests that he was fine, and asked Friday to have some hot soup brought up.

Five days passed before Peter could break free. He’d been unconscious for two of them, recovering from surgery to help extract the B.A.R.F. device. Once he’d healed up enough, faster thanks to his abilities, he’d been ready to leave. Since he wasn’t going to get the green light from any of his team, he’d gone for the next best thing: Friday.

Peter had to beg Friday not to alert Tony, not an easy feat, but ever since Karen, Peter found he was pretty good at befriending artificial technology. With Friday on his side, it was easy to slip out unnoticed.

So, that’s how Peter found himself suited up with the wind whistling in his ears as he made his way to Deadpool’s apartment. He’d had to stop at his own first, of course, to pick up a spare suit. Thankfully, someone (likely Tony) had found it prudent to pay his rent because there was no glaring eviction notice slapped on his door when he returned.

Peter slowed down, heart rate picking up, as he found himself in Deadpool’s neighborhood.

All he knew was that Deadpool had come out of B.A.R.F. okay.

He also knew he hadn’t been by to see Peter once since.

Peter had tried not to take it personally. For all that Peter had faced in there, Deadpool had faced worse. The bad memories Peter had lurking in his subconscious were nothing in comparison to Deadpool’s demons.

The man had already lived them once. To have to relive them again, watch them play out before his very eyes, unable to do anything, must have been torture. To have had a witness to it all, even a close friend such as Peter…

Deadpool’s cries and yells echoed in his ears, but they cleared as he focused on scaling the building, counting each window until he knew he’d gotten to Deadpool’s.

He always left it open. One, because he knew no one could get up here from this height, and two, because he knew the only exception to that was Peter.

“It’s like leaving the light on for ya,” Deadpool had joked. “Just come on in whenever you need, okay?”

Peter’s heart clenched at the memory.

How had he missed so many signs?

He let his hands stick to the glass, sliding it up expertly in silence. He crawled through, like that of a tiny, unsuspecting spider, without a peep. He politely closed it behind himself, but as he turned to see if Deadpool was in, he paused.

This was… beyond disastrous.

Peter wrinkled his nose. It smelled _horrible_ in here, like the copper tang of old pennies and garbage and _despair._

It was like a tiny tornado had hit. Destination: Wade’s apartment. Things were littered haphazardly _everywhere_ , far more than just the daily clutter of clothes, take-aways, and spare weapons Peter was used to. There was ammunition on the counters and stray bullet shells on the floor while a knife was left in the couch around a worryingly large, dried, brown stain. There were bits of broken plates and glasses strewn about, as if they’d been thrown in a rage and left in disregard.

Peter’s heart ached as he took the scene in; it ached even more when he noticed Deadpool was nowhere to be seen in the hurricane of destruction.

He tiptoed through the mess. It was easy enough to evade with his abilities, and he made for the master bedroom. It was the only other room besides the bathroom in the apartment, and if Wade had indeed left for a mission or, perhaps, just _left_ —

Then he’d missed his chance.

Peter shook off the anxiety creeping up his spine, but a feeling that felt a lot like desperation still clung to him.

There had been so much Peter had let himself be blind to in order to protect himself, but in doing so, he’d managed to hurt someone who was the least deserving of it.

As Peter made his way down the narrow hallway, he noticed the door to the bedroom was cracked open and prayed he’d find Deadpool within it; the state he’d find him in, however, was up for debate.

But as Peter approached, his sensitive hearing picked up murmuring. Peter felt a rush of immense relief that Deadpool was okay, and he wouldn’t find him _dead_ , of all things.

“—there’s no reason to be so fucking _snide_ , White, just share with the class what you really want to say.”

A pause as if waiting for an answer. Then a humorless laugh.

“‘Running like a coward?’” Deadpool scoffed. “Why don’t you go play a nice round of hide and go _fuck yourself_.”

Peter hesitated outside the door. He knew Deadpool had no company but the voices inside his own head. Now, more than ever, he knew that. Yet, he wasn’t sure if he should interrupt. With the destructive display scattered across the apartment, Peter didn’t need to imagine the mental state the man was in.

Partially, Peter felt with a pang of regret, it was because of _him_.

But he was here to fix it, if he could. And if he couldn’t, at least he’d tried. There weren’t many things he got the opportunity to change in his life, but this? This was worth trying for. This was worth that uncomfortable teetering moment between ‘ _everything will be okay’_ and ‘ _everything falling apart_ ’ until the balance tipped to one side or the other.

A quiet exhale left him, the last steeling of nerves, before Peter reached out a fingertip and prodded the door just enough to have it swing open.

A small creak emanated from the hinges, and in less than a second, less than _half_ a second, Peter’s senses trilled, blaring a warning, and he gave himself up to intuition, swiftly sidestepping.

Misplacement of air and a soft whistle—

 _Thud_.

Peter turned his head to watch as a throwing star was embedded into the wall behind where he’d just stood with deadly force.

His heart pumped rapidly inside his chest, a response to his senses and the swift rush of adrenaline he’d just received. When a warning didn’t come again, Peter peeked his head around the corner.

Deadpool was looking back at him, masked and wide-eyed.

The ex-mercenary looked the least put together Peter had ever seen him. The only part of his suit he wore was his mask, the rest of him was garbed in regular civilian clothing. He wore loose grey sweats and a ratty t-shirt that had the words _"orgasm donor”_ of all things printed across the chest. Peter couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corner of his lips at the crude words.

He’d never seen Deadpool outside his suit. Even when Peter had been over, Deadpool made sure to stay suited up. Peter had always assumed it was because Peter himself was in costume, and he’d kept it on in solidarity.

After the memoires Peter had seen, he now knew the real reason was because he’d never wanted Peter to see what was underneath because, for some reason, he’d gotten the impression Peter would be repulsed, and that hurt like a swift kick to the chest. Peter had never cared about Wade’s scarring. Ever.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Deadpool swore. “Now I’m hallucinating! The good times just keep on _rollin_ ’.”

His voice was colored with resentment and Deadpool threw his hands up, turning back to the duffel bag he was obviously packing.

Peter stepped hesitantly into the doorway, afraid of whatever else Deadpool had nearby that could be used as a flingable weapon.

“I’m not a hallucination, Deadpool.”

Deadpool snorted loudly. “That’s what they always say.”

Peter’s lips twisted into a frown.

“How should I prove that I’m real?”

A shoulder rose and fell dispassionately. “I’ve got stuff to do,” Deadpool addressed his socks as he stuffed them into his bag. “So, if you’re here to mock and taunt, just get it over with. I didn’t pencil in a breakdown today. I’ve got places to be, people to kill; I’m sure you understand.”

Peter’s frown twisted itself deeper.

“I certainly _don’t_ ,” he huffed indignantly, but Deadpool paid him no mind. He really believed him to be a hallucination, a nuisance inflicted by his own self-destructive psyche.

Briefs followed socks, followed shirts, then pants as Deadpool continued to fill his bag, ignorant of Peter behind him. The desperation that had swept up and down Peter’s spine found a new residence in his throat, and he choked on the need to stall Deadpool, to stop him from leaving before Peter could right his wrongs.

Peter wasn’t sure that he would ever see him again if Deadpool left.

Suddenly, an idea came to Peter. It promised danger if it was ill-received, but he was up to try anything if it got Wade to turn around and meet his eyes, to acknowledge and understand that Peter was here. _Real._

In three long strides, Peter was behind the taller man, and before another throwing star could find itself flung his way, Peter reached out. His gloved hand met the skin just under the sleeve of Deadpool’s shirt, and he wrapped his hand around a textured, thick bicep.

Deadpool stilled, like a cloudless night, like a stone statue, like a calm creek.

He didn’t move until Peter squeezed, letting the pressure build gradually so Deadpool got the picture that he wasn’t something made up to torture him, that it was really him.

Peter’s senses didn’t warn him this time, clearly not seeing a threat as Deadpool turned, knocking his hand away sharply. The dresser he’d been packing his stuff from knocking sharply against the wall as he distanced himself from Peter. Bumping into it, a few objects fell, landing with soft thuds to the carpeted floor.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Deadpool warned in a low, hurt voice.

Peter exhaled sharply, hurt himself. He knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but Deadpool was making it _so much harder_.

Frustrated, Peter tore at the back of his mask until it was off. He could tell he was red faced and disheveled from the frantic unmasking, but if anything it matched his mood.

“ _Deadpool, it’s me_ ,” Peter stressed purposefully, barefaced and desperate. He didn’t know how else to prove to the man that he was the real deal. He didn’t expect to find Deadpool here if Peter left and came back. He wasn’t going to throw away this last shot.

“I know,” Deadpool replied dismissively, turning back around. “Go away.”

Peter stared at his broad back, confused, as a painful jab of emotion hit him straight in the heart.

“I just want to talk.” Peter winched at the desperate, pleading tone that had crept up into his voice.

Deadpool ignored him.

 _Well_ , Peter thought, _at least he knows I’m real._

The thought wasn’t as comforting as it had been a moment ago.

“I know—” Peter started, then stopped. He took a moment to really think about what he wanted to say, needing to get it _right_. He squared his shoulders, hands toying with the mask in his fingers from the nervous energy thrumming through him.

He started again.

“I _don’t_ know,” Peter admitted. “I don’t know a lot of things. I don’t know how I came to be the one to be bitten by that Spider all those years ago. I don’t know if I failed Uncle Ben that night or if fate would have found a way, regardless. I don’t know if all this is the best or the worst thing that’s happened to me, and I still don’t know if I’m even doing enough with the power I was given or—or if I’m even half of what it takes to be a true hero—”

Peter took a breath, refocusing his rambling thoughts.

“There’s a lot I don’t know, Deadpool,” Peter repeated, hesitating half a second before continuing on, “I don’t know half of what someone as strong and resilient as you has been through, and I don’t know how you’ve managed all these years.”

He glanced up to see the ridgid, set line of Deadpool’s back.

“I may not know what it was like for you,” Peter told him sincerely, “but I want to.”

The words Peter wanted to say caught in his throat, so instead he whispered, “I _really really_ like you, Deadpool.”

Silence, then, “I don’t need your pity.”

While the response hurt, it wasn’t unexpected. Peter had known, especially after that last memory he’d witnessed of Deadpool’s, that he’d need some convincing. Peter had a lot to make up for these past few years, where his silence and disregard towards Wade’s feelings had clearly left its mark on the man.

He’d known exactly what he needed. It had been the one thing Peter had asked for that Tony had complied without complaint or question. He knew if Peter was asking for this, this memory, it was important.

Peter turned his right arm until his inner forearm was exposed, and the fingers of his left hand slid in a familiar motion to display a screen. It projected into the space between the two, visible to them both, although Deadpool's back was still to Peter as he continued packing.

A deep breath. An exhale.

“I asked Tony to save an important memory for me,” Peter told him before he allowed his finger to press down, and the memory he’d collected, saved, stored within Karen’s cloud, played out before them.

It was the hospital room Peter had come to know as Aunt May’s. The room had only ever held the claustrophobic feeling of little time left, and if Peter never saw those familiar drab walls again, it would still be too soon.

He was sitting in a chair beside Aunt May, the same as the one he’d been in when Deadpool had found him in B.A.R.F. He was holding her hand and, since he believed her to be resting, crying silently.

Peter realized how young he looked in that moment, a few years into college and so very scared of being alone. The weight of losing his last family member was on every inch of his face. Peter still felt that pain to this day; even though the pain of Aunt May’s loss wasn’t as fresh, the ache still remained. His heart felt the same phantom anguish currently written across his younger face.

“Please don’t leave me alone,” Peter implored in a whisper, the noises of a busy hospital not enough to cover up his pleading, and in the silent room between Deadpool and him, it was even easier to hear.

His silent cries hiccuped into an escaped sob, and Peter let his head drop down onto the bed to muffle it.

Peter remembered how much he didn’t want to wake her, knowing she needed her rest.

But Aunt May always knew when Peter needed her the most. Despite only being his Aunt, she had a mothers intuition through and through.

The hand he’d been holding slipped out of his and he stilled, cries choked off, as she lifted it to sift through his hair soothingly.

“What’s all the tears for, huh?” Aunt May asked, like she always had whenever he cried as a boy. Her voice was less strong than it used to be, a little softer and a lot raspier, but still filled with the same tinge of love he’d always known.

She inhaled shakily, aided by oxygen, and patted his head once more before he lifted it to look at her.

Aunt May smiled softly, and although she tried never to show it to him, sadly. She knew as well as he did her days were slowly ending, their borrowed time together drawing closer and closer to an end with each passing second. This was her third hospital visit in a handful of months, but it never got easier for him to see her lying on that bed, frail body swallowed up by white sheets.

Peter leaned back into his chair, wiping at wet, red eyes.

This wasn’t the first time Peter had seen this memory. It had played in B.A.R.F., and had been the one he refused to leave from, the one he’d managed to stay in due to his willful stubbornness, when Deadpool had shown up.

But despite it being his own memory, it still captured his attention, and Peter was surprised when he glanced up to see Deadpool had turned around without him noticing, arms crossed defensively, to watch the memory. Oh, it didn’t look like he was watching considering Deadpool’s head was tilted in such a way, as if uninterested, but Peter just knew he was.

Peter focused back to the memory as his past self asked in a broken voice, “Why do I have to lose everyone?”

Aunt May shook her head as she stretched her hand out for him to take again. He did so without hesitation. He grasped it as if it was the only anchor keeping her here with him.

“Not everyone,” Aunt May reminded him. “You’ve got plenty of people here who care for you. Ned, MJ, Mr. Stark, those Avengers…”

Aunt May paused deliberately before adding, a touch sly, “...and that strapping man of yours in the black and red.”

Peter glanced up, eyes red, but cheeks redder.

The creak of the dresser gave Deadpool away as he shifted to focus fully on the memory in front of him. Afraid to look up, lest he make Deadpool feel uncomfortable, Peter kept his eyes where they were. Inside he felt a small thrill go through him. Maybe he’d be able to get through to Wade after all, with this memory.

Peter watched as Aunt May gave his past self a knowing look and squeezed his hand. If she’d been able to, he knew she would have leaned down to kiss it. She had always been affectionate, even more so after Uncle Ben's passing: hugging him, kissing him, and making sure he was loved before he ever could doubt it.

Now it was his turn to make her feel that way. Peter scooted the hospital chair closer so he could clasp her hand in both of his and hold it tight as she continued on.

“I know you haven’t had it easy in your young life, honey,” May sighed regretfully, then paused, turning her head to release a rattling cough. She turned back with a reassuring smile. “But I’ve seen how you look when you talk about him, when you’ve come back from spending time with him. Whatever vow you’ve taken—”

Peter fidgeted uneasily. “It’s not a vow, Aunt May. I just—everyone gets hurt when they’re around me. Uncle Ben—”

Aunt May’s hand tightened in his, and she interjected fiercely, “Peter Benjamin Parker, you know what happened to your Uncle wasn’t your fault.”

“But—”

Her pointed look stopped him from continuing that train of thought, but it didn’t derail his main point.

Her eyes softened as she asked him, “Why are you so insistent on being alone? First MJ, now this.”

Peter knew exactly what she was talking about.

“I would never want anything to happen to MJ,” Peter whispered out, something cracking deep within him at the thought; it was the very same thought that had caused him to ultimately end it with her, despite his feelings.

Peter had tried to give his relationship with MJ a chance, he really had. But as he got closer to her, he kept imagining her ending up with the same fate as his Uncle Ben.

Dead.

All because he was Spider-Man.

MJ had too much of a future ahead of her to have it all end because her boyfriend decided to be a crime-fighting vigilante.

“Peter,” she spoke gently, “the people in your life understand the risks of loving you. They understand that Spider-Man comes first, and they know what that means. MJ knew about that part of you before you two even —”

“There’s too much risk,” Peter protested. “I tried not to think about it when I was with MJ, but I couldn’t stop. What if something happened? What if she…” Peter trailed off, unable to finish his own question. There were too many ‘what if’s’.

“Aunt May, how can I let someone get close to me knowing I could be the reason they’re killed? That one day I could be the reason they don’t laugh again, smile again, _live_ _another day_ again?”

An escaped tear rolled down his cheek, and Aunt May tutted, shaking her hand free from his to swipe it away.

“From what I hear,” Aunt May mentioned knowingly, “that friend of yours can’t die. There’s nothing you could do to change that man’s life, except maybe love him.”

Peter slipped his hands off the bed to clasp them tightly in his lap, and he kept his gaze lowered, focused on them.

“I believe you might have something in common with him, don’t you think? You’ve told me he’s mentioned losing people, too. You can’t lose him, but he could lose you.”

Peter’s head snapped up. He hadn’t really thought of it like that.

But Peter was Spider-Man, and so far, he’d always turned out triumphant.

“He won’t,” Peter retorted determinedly. When he realized just what he’d implied, he flushed. “I mean, he wouldn’t,” he corrected. “Theoretically.”

Aunt May chuckled. “Yes, _theoretically.”_

She coughed again, a little more aggressively this time, and Peter winced.

“You should be resting, May. I can come back later.”

It went unspoken, but both of them knew they weren’t guaranteed a later.

Aunt May looked at him with a shine in her eyes. “I want to go knowing you’ll have someone to love you every day, Peter. Someone to look out for you as much as you look out for New York. I may not have met this Wade, but from what you’ve told me, he’s a lost soul looking for something. I think he’s found it, and I think you’ve found something, too.”

She reached out to brush an unruly curl from his forehead tenderly. “Let him love you, Peter. Let yourself love back if that’s how you truly feel. Loving someone is a _choice,_ sweetheart. One that can sometimes be painful, yes, but there is also so much joy in being wrapped up in someone else's world. Let yourself experience that.”

She sighed reminiscently.

“I wouldn’t change one thing about my life with your Uncle Ben,” she told him. “Even knowing how tough it was losing him. You know why? Because I’ve never felt like that about anyone in my entire life. He was my sun, and even when my sun went out, I still felt his warmth.”

She sniffled for a moment, but felt compelled to finish what she had to say. “Loving someone, Peter, is _never_ the wrong choice.”

Aunt May adjusted herself in the bed then, sitting up a little straighter so she could lean over and cup her hands around his damp cheeks. “Let yourself be _happy_. You carry too much guilt around on those superhero shoulders of yours. No one can absolve it but you.

“Don’t isolate yourself from others because you're scared of losing them,” she tilted his head up so that his eyes met hers. “Let him in, Peter. You deserve love.”

With that said, she leaned over, swaying slightly, to plant a kiss in the middle of his forehead.

“I love you, Peter.”

“I love you, too, Aunt May.”

His breastbone ached with emotion, and the sadness he usually felt about Aunt May’s passing spiked. Peter hadn’t realized his eyes had filled with tears until the memory finished. The screen in front of them disappeared and suddenly he wasn’t in that hospital room. Instead, he was here in Deadpool’s apartment. He swiped at his blurry eyes and tentatively glanced at Deadpool.

Deadpool’s arms hung limply at his sides, and his mask was, for once, expressionless. It made it hard to read just what he was feeling.

Peter was about to say something to break the tense silence when instead Deadpool spoke.

“There wasn’t any hot sauce.”

“What?” Peter asked, puzzled by the non-sequitur. He’d been anxious what Deadpool’s reaction might be to the memory, but now Peter was worried he’d broken him.

“That night on the rooftop,” and now Deadpool’s voice held a bit more conviction. “I didn’t get any tacos with hot sauce.”

Peter knew exactly what night he was talking about, considering he’d just relived it days ago, although he had no idea what made Deadpool bring it up _now_ after the memory he’d just shown him, of all things.

“Why?” Peter probed, knowing Deadpool loved anything hot. ‘The hotter the better’ was practically his motto, or at least, that’s what he’d once told Peter. He’d seen Deadpool eat a ghost pepper for a snack because it was all he’d had left in the fridge. Back then, Peter had to work up the courage to tell Wade he, unfortunately, was not partial to foods that burnt the inside of his mouth beyond repair. At all.

“Because you don’t like it,” Deadpool answered with a casual shrug, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t _simple_ at all, and Peter’s heart exploded.

“I’m sorry,” Peter started in a whisper. He cleared his throat and started a bit more strongly. “I lied that night. It wasn’t the tacos, and it wasn’t hot sauce. I’m pretty sure—no, I _know_ that memory we saw was mine. It was the day after I lost May, and I asked you to come patrol with me because I was lonely and miserable and just wanted to be around someone that might make me feel a little less numb.”

Peter hadn’t been planning on emotional word vomit, but he couldn’t stop it. The dam had broken and everything he’d been keeping in all these years tumbled out.

“It probably wasn’t the smartest plan, acting like everything was okay that night, but I—I just wanted to pretend. Like it was just another night. Because then maybe it would be. But by the end of it, while we were sitting there together, I remembered the conversation I’d had with her, the one I just showed you, and I wanted to make her proud. I wanted to make the move she’d urged me to make, so maybe she could see, from wherever she was, that I’d stopped beating myself up for every person I’d gotten hurt, every person I hadn’t saved, that I’d finally—”

Peter paused, taking a shaky inhale and exhale before he continued, to try and rally his thoughts back to composure. “I wanted so badly to do something that night, but I couldn’t. I kept getting in my own head. I kept thinking of everything that could go wrong, I was afraid you only had an unhealthy obsession while I—I was falling. I didn’t want to take advantage or—” Peter’s eyes flickered up quickly, then away, “push my feelings on you.

“After that night, even though we still hung out, I felt like I’d missed my chance. It _felt_ like something had changed even if it didn’t seem like it, so I convinced myself that we were just friends, that you were being typical Deadpool. I tucked away my feelings and ignored yours because…”

Peter trailed off, afraid to say the next part, but he owed it to the both of them to trek on.

“I was afraid. I’ve always kept my friends at a distance. I broke up the only serious relationship I ever had on the _chance_ she could get hurt because of me, because of Spider-Man. You saw some of it. _Every_ bad thing I’ve ever experienced has connected back to my secret identity. But, despite it all, I love what I do, and the truth is… I don’t know how to be Peter Parker without Spider-Man, and so I just figured that meant I’d lead a pretty lonely life.”

Peter shrugged, eyes glued to the floor, afraid to see Wade’s reaction. “Then I met you, and I started to realize I might be able to have something with you as both. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, even though I was pretty sure you were only seeing Spider-Man and not the man underneath.”

There was a shift in the air, and Peter sensed when Deadpool moved, close enough to share space though he made no move to reach out.

“Even though I couldn’t see you,” Deadpool told him roughly, “I saw you.”

Peter felt his pulse quicken, his chest tighten, his stomach somersault.

This was the moment. There was no going back now, Peter told himself. He wanted Wade to know, to have this part of him. Even if it didn’t work out, Peter was so sick of being alone.

“And seeing your memories, Wade, I saw _you_ , and it made me realize something.”

Peter could almost feel the tension shift in the air after the words left him. It was easy for him to pick up the minute stiffening of Deadpool’s body as if he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“It wasn’t whatever you're thinking, I’m sure,” Peter reassured. “Your memories showed me we’re not so different, you and I. We both have things we’ve hid away, kept close to our chests, that have shaped how we’ve let ourselves live. But yours didn’t scare me away, Wade.”

Peter stepped closer, their chests almost touching. “I want to know those parts of you. They make you who you are, and seeing them allowed me to understand the man beneath the mask, behind the name, the jokes, and all the death. It helped me know _you,_ and it finally made me accept what I’d been trying to deny all these years.”

Peter had come this far. He’d admitted what he’d kept bottled up for years, and with one last inhale, his heart beating a tattoo against his chest, he laid all his proverbial cards on the table.

 _Here goes nothing, May_ , he sent up silently.

“I love you, Wade.”

* * *

“ _I love you, Wade_.”

The words echoed loudly in Deadpool’s ears like the clanging of drums, the explosions of fireworks, the urgent blaring of a fire alarm. He wasn’t entirely sure this wasn’t just the cruel manifestation of having killed himself one too many times, because even after seeing Peter’s memory, even after hearing those words from those very own heavenly lips, Deadpool couldn’t believe it.

White and Yellow’s voices overlapped at high volume, both of them talking over each other frantically with opinions that needed to be heard.

But the only thing Deadpool wanted to hear were those words from that gorgeous mouth again.

Peter seemed to take Wade’s silence as a rejection because he continued on a tad more deflated, “You don’t have to say it back. I know I’ve likely missed my chance, but I wanted to tell you. I’ve been wanting to tell you. I just always had an excuse. I was scared of losing you because, even if you always come back, that doesn’t mean you’ll always be _mine_. I told myself it was just infatuation, that you—you weren’t really in love with _me_ , but a version of me that wasn’t real, and I didn’t want to take advantage of that for my own personal gain. But I wasn’t being fair to you. I’ve seen how fiercely you can love, Wade. And I—I think I could love you just as fiercely back. If you’ll have me, I think we’d—”

This was more than one poor Deadpool could take, and that familiar impulse rose within him, rearing its ugly head. None of this was true, this _had_ to be in his head, and the voices repeating the same sentiments crawled like ants under his skin. There was just no possible way this beautiful man was pulling a Notting Hill to _him_ of all people.

There was only one thing that worked when he was this far off course from reality.

Deadpool had barely moved, but then again he didn’t need to. There were weapons in every crevice of this apartment, both of the ostentatious and unassuming varieties, and before he could even think about it, there was a small piece of metal protruding from his thigh.

Pain blossomed, grounding Wade. He watched as the blood spread against the cotton of his grey sweatpants. Nothing like a letter opener to the thigh to keep the crazy at bay.

“ _What. The. Fuck,”_ Peter’s bewildered, shrill voice hit his ears, and Deadpool glanced up, taken aback to see the man still standing before him.

“You’re still here?”

Peter made an exasperated noise in his throat as he threw his hands up in the air. “Yes! How does that have anything to do with you _stabbing yourself_?!”

“I had to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, or worse, hallucinating,” Deadpool tried for a reasonable tone. “You can never be too sure.”

It apparently didn’t seem reasonable to Peter as he argued, “I could have just pinched you!”

Deadpool… hadn’t thought of that. He extracted the bloody letter opener, tossing it to the side carelessly. “Yeah, I guess it seemed like a better idea in my head.”

He stepped closer to Peter and asked, uncharacteristically hesitant, “So, everything you said is true?”

“Are you going to stab yourself again if I say yes?”

Wade shook his head, and Peter stressed, “Then _yes_ , Wade, of course what I said is true. I know we have a lot to learn about one another, but I want this. Even if you don’t belie—”

That was all Deadpool needed to hear before he descended on Peter with a searing kiss.

He’d gotten pretty good at whipping off his mask, although it'd always been in cases where food was involved.

It’d been a long time since he’d taken his mask off for kissing.

But kiss Peter he did, long and hard, because the man of his wet dreams had proclaimed his love, and there was only one proper response to that.

As with any good thing that crept his way, there was a skeptical part of Wade that was still half convinced this was a fever dream from one too many of his own unalivings. But the feel of Peter’s lips on his own was chipping away at it, and even if this _was_ just an extremely realistic conjuring of his own broken mind, Deadpool would get every ounce of enjoyment he could out of it until he ultimately woke up.

And if it _did_ turn out to be true then—

_Holy shit._

Spider-Man _loved_ him.

“I guess,” Peter panted between Wade’s hungry kisses, “this means—”

Wade drew him in closer, swiping his tongue across Peter’s bottom lip as he did. A smirk ticked at Wade’s scarred lips as Peter moaned and practically melted into his arms.

_{Oh my god, we know what it feels like to kiss Spider-Man!!}_

**[You mean** Peter.]

Peter, finally on board with the more kissing and less talking, pressed himself up along Wade’s front, hands creeping up to frame wide shoulders, tongue swiping against Wade's in a tease.

 _Fuck yes_.

Wade spun them around swiftly, walking Peter backwards until he hit the dresser with a jarring bang, neither one of them breaking the kiss. Whatever else Wade had sitting there fell to the floor as he swept his hand blindly across it roughly, scattering his bag and unpacked items out of the way so he could lift Peter up to sit. The new position put them at the perfect height for kissing.

Or talking.

Which is what Peter still seemed to want to do as he broke their kiss and trailed his hands along the back of Wade’s neck as if looking for something.

“How did you come out of it?” Peter finally asked, hands still caressing the spot where Wade’s port had been.

“Stark got me out, same as you,” Wade let his head fall against Peter’s shoulder. He really wanted to go back to the kissing. “It just took a little longer because I…”

He trailed off. They both knew what he’d done.

“Apparently, they had to do a bit of surgical work to remove the port,” Peter touched self-consciously at the small bald spot at the nape of his own neck where a jagged pink scar remained. It wouldn’t be there in a few days time. “How’d they get yours out?”

“I ripped it out,” Deadpool told him gruffly.

“By yourself?” Peter asked, sounding scandalized.

“No need for painstaking surgery on me,” Wade shrugged dismissively. “I wanted them to focus on you. All I got were the brain tinglies after ripping it out. No big deal.”

Peter didn’t look reassured by that, so Wade took advantage of what he was allowed to do now and kissed him.

But Peter apparently still had some more talking left in him, and Wade’s mouth trailed after Peter’s as he broke free again to say, “So, do—uh, do you—”

Gloved hands clenched nervously at Wade’s sides as he stammered, and Wade let his forehead rest against Peter’s. Ocean blue eyes met anxious brown ones, and for a moment it was as if Wade was looking into Vanessa’s.

There was a clear difference. Where Vanessa’s eyes had been a deep brown, like depths of swirling chocolate, Peter’s were speckled with bursts of honey. Where Vanessa’s had been bold and brazen, Peter’s held trepidation, fear of rejection.

Wade had yet to see what those eyes looked like sparkling with happiness or crinkling in laughter. He wanted to, God, did he ever. And one day, he knew, he’d come to see those eyes cloud with age until eventually they’d dull completely.

The flash of Vanessa’s eyes left him, leaving behind the reminder that while he may one day lose this, he should enjoy it while he has it. _Let_ himself enjoy it.

“Peter,” Wade whispered the name he’d always longed to say against the man’s lips, knowing this was his time to prove that what he felt was real, too. “It isn’t hero worship or that on a good day I’m half crazy or even that your ass looks _fantastic_ in that suit... Ok, I lied, it might be a little bit of that last one.”

Peter huffed out a breath of sweet laughter Wade could practically taste.

Wade hesitated, his lips brushing over Peter’s in distraction. The words he had to say had been tucked close to his heart for so long he wasn’t sure he wanted it out in the open between them. Wade was so tired of giving parts of himself away only to have them given back to him in pieces, but Peter had exposed his delicate heart and trusted Wade not to break it. He supposed it was only fair he do the same.

_{Tell him, tell him, tellhimtellhimtellhim.}_

**[You’re not going to get him by being a pussy.]**

_Go big or go home_ , Wade thought, for once in agreeance with his voices.

“I’m not a good man,” was what came out first.

 _{That is NOT a love confession!}_ came Yellow’s scandalized voice.

**[I knew he’d fuck this up for us.]**

A thick, scarred thumb settled itself on a plush bottom lip, pressing against it lightly. Wade felt more than heard the hitch in Peter’s breath as he let it rest there.

“I’m trying to be though,” he continued on despite the voices advising his next words deafeningly. He ignored them. Wade knew what he wanted to say. “For _you_. Because you're the best man I know, and if I have to live forever, I’d rather have a minute of you in my eternity than not at all.”

Peter leaned back to peer at Wade’s face, taking in the sincerity on his unmasked face. It left Wade feeling uncomfortably exposed, but he supposed it was a feeling he’d have to get used to. Whatever Peter found there must have been what he was looking for because suddenly a fire caught, and there was a _blaze_ rising in those hazel eyes.

New York’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man was certainly getting _friendly_ as he wrapped his legs around Wade’s waist to tug him closer. The force had Wade bracing himself with one hand on the dresser, and the other crept around Peter’s neck to draw him in closer, matching his energy to pull him into a fierce kiss.

Peter’s hands roamed as their kiss deepened, until Wade couldn’t take it anymore. He slipped his hands under Peter’s thighs and let him cling to him as he walked, backwards, to the bed. Peter wrapped his legs tighter around Wade's middle and hugged his wide shoulders, kisses slipping from his mouth down to his neck.

“Ah, shit, fuck,” Wade cursed as Peter bite down on the junction between neck and shoulder just as his foot hit one of the random items he’d flung off his dresser and he tripped the rest of the way onto the bed behind him.

A sharp wheeze left Wade as Peter landed on him harshly, but it hardly mattered because a second later they were kissing again, and the bruise to his kidney would heal. Having Spider-Man straddling him, hovering over him, kissing him, was a fantasy turned reality. One that Wade would gladly sacrifice a kidney for. That’s why he had two, right?

Peter bit down on Wade’s bottom lip, tongue soothing the ache a moment later, and then it was Wade’s turn to melt underneath the man.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” Wade admitted breathily beneath him as Peter ground down against him.

“Hmm?” Peter hummed, kissing up Wade's neck as his hands found their way under his shirt.

“Uh–Well—” Deadpool wasn’t sure how to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t ruin the mood.

Peter apparently understood because he laughed, pulling back to glance down at Wade with raised eyebrows.

“I’m in college, Wade. I’m way past the point of being a blushing virgin.”

Deadpool pouted beneath him, hands coming up to cup Peter’s hips. “Can’t we roleplay?”

“Why,” Peter smirked as he leaned down to whisper in his ear, “do you want to teach me, _sir_?”

It was over exaggerated and clearly meant to make fun of him, but Wade still short circuited anyway, unprepared for the soft innocence of the question with the suggestive tone beneath it.

Peter kissed him back to coherency. Somewhat.

“I’m down for roleplay,” Peter agreed, “but not now. I’ve been waiting too long for this.”

Wade came fully back online at that. “ _You’ve_ been waiting? Sweetcheeks, I fell for you the moment your pert little ass swung by all those years ago. You can't possibly hold a candle to the absolute _torch_ I've held for you all these years. So if anyone’s engine is ready to be revved, it’s mine.”

Peter laughed, and Deadpool felt the beautiful sound reverberate through his whole body. Suddenly, he felt lightheaded with the thought that he got to have _this._ Not just kisses and sex, but laughter and smiles. Peter there by his side in the mornings when Wade was usually alone and lonely. God, he wanted to make this man pancakes for breakfast for the rest of his life.

“Are we really trying to out-horny each other?” Peter wondered aloud, amused.

Wade shook his head. “No, that would mean this is a competition. Competitions have losers.”

Without hesitation, Wade curled a leg around Peter and flipped them expertly so the younger man was flushed and wide eyed, smiling brilliantly up at him from where Wade had laid a moment ago.

“We’re both gonna be the winners tonight,” he promised.

Peter's smile widened. His fingers trailed up, tugging at Wade so he fit snugly against him.

“I like the sound of that.”

Then they were kissing again, and it was amazing, perfect, 10/10, would recommend, but Wade was getting uncomfortable in his bloodstained sweats, and Peter _definitely_ was having a problem in that suit of his.

But everywhere Wade’s hands roamed over the suit, they slipped right over; there were no catches, no openings, no seams. Was Spider-Man in a glorified onesie? That _had_ to make it breezy when he needed to drain the dragon.

“How do you get this thing _off?_ ” Wade practically whined, sitting up to look down at the disheveled spider in his rumbled (thankfully _mostly_ clean) bedsheets. His brown curls looked even more unruly from the path Wade’s hands had run through them, and the flush to his skin looked _delectable_. It took everything in Wade not to lean back down again.

Peter’s smile widened as he pointed at his Spider-Man logo. “Press.”

Wade looked at him skeptically, raising an eyebrow.

“You want me out of this suit, don’t you?” Peter teased him playfully, raising an eyebrow in return.

Like he was on some American game show, Wade pressed down on the Spider-Man logo with both hands, locking in his answer. It gave under the pressure, and Peter’s suit went loose and lax around his body.

“Oh,” Wade watched as Peter slipped his arms out of his suit, “you _really_ shouldn’t have shown me that.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Don’t get any ideas, you can’t just randomly activate it.”

_Challenge accepted._

Saving that thought for later, Wade let his hands roam over the newly revealed skin.

_{He’s beautiful!}_

Wade tried really hard to ignore Yellow and his reverent remarks, yet he couldn’t help but agree. He leaned down to trail kisses over a protruding collar bone, biting down just to hear that addictive little hitch in Peter’s breathing.

“Perfect,” Wade whispered against pale, unmarked, _beautiful_ skin. He tried not to focus on his own House of Horror flesh pressed up against it, ignoring it in favor of focusing on making Peter feel good. Now wasn’t the time for a body dysphoria episode, not when he’d been dreaming of this for, oh, _ever_. He couldn’t blow this by going all… _Deadpool_.

Right now he was just Wade, lover extraordinaire, and while it had been a while since he’d had a touch that wasn’t part of a shady transaction, he wasn’t _that_ rusty.

Aw, that lovely hitch again as Wade laved at a nipple. Peter’s hands came up to grasp at his shoulders, digging in just this side of painful. It made him wish he had hair so he could feel those fingers running through it, tugging. Wade moaned around the pebbled flesh in his mouth, always a fan of pain with his pleasure, and suddenly, it was as if Peter had been waiting for permission to make noise. He let his own whimper escape, and Wade felt himself impossibly stiffen at the sound.

**[Shit.]**

_{Make him do it again!}_

“Get _gone_ , you little voyeurs,” Wade growled to the voices, and Peter’s eyes blinked open from where they’d been previously closed in pleasure.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” Wade dismissed quickly, running his hand up Peter’s chest to frame his throat. Jesus, he could almost wrap his whole hand around it.

_{I wonder if he’s into breath play!}_

Wade growled out a warning at the intrusive, annoying voice as he leaned down to kiss Peter, tongue dipping in to tease before he came back up to say, “Just can’t believe how perfect you are.”

Peter blushed, and Wade delighted in seeing it spread across his torso and down to his navel where the suit lay rumpled, just waiting to be taken the rest of the way off.

Wade’s hands drifted down, but before he could make a move, Peter beat him to it—only his move was in an attempt to tug Wade’s shirt off.

He leaned back quickly, out of Peter’s hands. Peter frowned, leaning up on his elbows.

Wade hopped off him in a hurry. “Just have to gather some supplies,” he waggled his nonexistent eyebrows to lighten the heavy mood he’d created, but it did nothing to settle the unease growing within his chest.

The last time he’d been fully exposed with someone, all his hideous skin on display, had been with Vanessa, and she’d already loved him before. Enough, apparently, to develop a Freddy Kruger fetish.

But Peter was young, and beautiful, and while he _said_ he loved Deadpool, did it extend to every bit of him? Because that was a lot to ask from someone as perfect as the Adonis-like man laid out on his bed.

**[I thought you weren’t going to blow this for us?]**

“I’m not,” Wade muttered quietly to himself as he shuffled to the side of the room, clicking off the overhead light so the setting sun could cast golden beams of light through his half opened blinds. He had no idea how far they’d go, would be happy with _anything_ , really, but he still grabbed some supplies from his dresser before he couldn’t stall anymore. Then he turned back to the patiently waiting man on his bed.

The patiently waiting _naked_ man on his bed.

Peter was laid out on his stomach, naked as the day he was born, and finally seeing that majestic ass sans spandex just about sent Wade into cardiac arrest.

“Baby boy,” and the nickname left him in a wheeze as he stumbled over to the bed where his spider sprawled. “You can’t just _do that_ to a man. I think I just died.”

Peter chuckled, looking over his shoulder. The only giveaway of his discomfort was the spreading red across his cheeks (the ones on his face, that is), otherwise he looked as comfortable as ever in his birthday suit. As he should, ‘cause _goddamn._

“Good thing you’ll come back, then,” was all Peter said to that.

Wade let the supplies drop on the nightstand, and knelt besides him on the bed. The additional weight caused Peter to tilt a little closer towards him.

“Yeah,” Wade agreed absentmindedly. “Good thing.”

He reached out to touch, but Peter twisted to lean on an elbow, grabbing his outstretched hand in midair. Wade’s eyes scanned downward, but he could only see a small sneak peek from the position Peter was in.

Wade was near salivating with the need to touch, and taste, and—

Peter was saying something.

“—okay?”

“Huh? Sorry, must have something stuck in here,” Wade titled his head to the side, as if expelling water. “What was that?”

Peter let his hand go, his lips quirked in amusement.

“Can I?” Peter asked, tugging at the bottom of his shirt with a loose hand. Wade’s stomach sank. He knew, of course, that he’d have to, but it still was an absolute boner killer.

Peter instantly backed off. “How about I turn around, and you can take it off when you feel comfortable, okay?”

He leaned in to press a quick, filthy kiss to Wade’s lips before he settled back down onto his stomach.

It left Wade slightly slack-jawed. He still couldn’t believe he got to have this.

To have _him_.

He couldn’t stop his scarred fingers from roaming, and they flirted down a straight spine, the skin smooth and flawless beneath them. Goosebumps followed in his touch’s wake, and the words he’d been thinking slipped out of their own accord.

“I get to have this?” Wade whispered reverently into the air around them, as if any louder would shatter what was building between them.

“You get to have me,” Peter whispered back, resting his head in his arms so he could get a peripheral view of Wade.

“You,” Wade repeated, voice small and awed.

He let his fingers trail down, down, down, till they hit the swell of Peter’s ass. Then he stopped.

Peter didn’t owe him anything. Not one thing. Yet here he was being patient and kind in the face of Wade’s hangups.

The least he could do was trust Peter enough to give him this.

Wade reached down and gripped the hem of his shirt before lifting it up and over his head, ignoring the instant panic that stirred inside him from doing so. He didn’t want to screw this up so soon although he had a feeling it wasn’t his skin that would screw it all up. Wade felt his muscles relax when he realized he’d clearly made the right choice when he saw Peter hide his reaction, a satisfied smile, in his arms.

 _God, I love this man_ , Wade thought and felt unstoppable in that moment, completely wrapped up in the handsome man beneath him.

Wade let his kisses trail the same path his fingers had moments before, and his desire increased with each moan and sigh he made fall from parted lips. He didn’t stop until he’d reached that perfect curve of flesh, and he bit down lightly.

“Deadpool,” Peter exhaled, and Wade shivered at hearing his deadly moniker said in such a drastically different way than he usually heard it.

Wade wasn’t sure what he was and wasn’t allowed to do, so he worked off Peter’s body language. At the moment, he seemed relaxed and languid, all signs pointing to go, and Wade wanted it to stay that way. He watched for a reaction as he leaned over, making a clear reach for the lube on his nightstand; the man beneath stayed completely tense free.

 _Oh, we’re doing this_ , Deadpool thought to himself as he thumbed the cap open and let a generous amount coat his fingers.

For once, his voices stayed silent, apparently just as into Wade getting some as the man was himself.

He rubbed the slickness absentmindedly, warming it up as he nudged Peter’s leg up higher so he had room to work with. He had no idea exactly how much ‘college experience’ his spider-babe had, but he wasn’t going to scrimp on prep, not when he knew there likely weren’t many college guys walking around with what _he_ was packing.

He thought he heard Yellow’s distinctive snicker, but it was lost to him as he brought a finger down to circle around Peter’s hole, a clear invitation for the other man to tell him to back off if need be. But Peter didn’t do anything other than adjust himself, drawing his knee up a little higher so Wade had more room to work with, and it gave him the perfect opportunity to slide in.

Peter’s shoulders tensed for a moment before relaxing, and Wade saw his hand grasp a little tighter at the bedsheets.

Wade took a moment before he continued to move, slowly, letting Peter get acclimated to one finger before he added another.

This time Peter’s shoulders tensed noticeably, his hands buried in Wade’s maroon sheets, and Wade paused halfway in.

“Am I hurting you, Petey,” he asked, mildly concerned, the nickname just falling from his lips. It sounded right. Peter. Petey. Petey _pie._ He’d save that particular one for the second date, though. He knew how much Spider-Man _loved_ his nicknames.

“N-no,” Peter gasped out. “You can k-keep going.”

Deadpool furrowed his eyebrows. “I’m not going to keep going if it hurts you,” he started to remove his fingers, but Peter made an abrupt noise.

“Don’t! I–it doesn’t hurt,” he assured breathlessly. “It’s different. The—the texture.”

 _Of your scars_ , he didn’t say, but Wade heard anyway.

Before Wade had a chance to respond back to that, Peter admitted, “I like it. Keep going.”

Wade, shellshocked, could do nothing but proceed like he’d been ordered.

But it circled around and around in his head.

He _liked_ the scars. They felt _good_.

Well, he was in for one hell of a ride, then, Wade thought dazedly.

He continued to finger Peter as the thoughts swirled in his mind, but at the slight twist of his wrist a moan escaped Peter that had the distracting thoughts dissipating. He went back to hyper focusing on the writhing super twink in front of him. The bedroom was gradually filled with soft, breathy moans that turned to loud gasps as Wade assaulted that spot within Peter and brushed over it in a brutalizing pattern.

It wasn’t until Peter was practically begging, back bowed, hands nearly tearing at the sheets, that Deadpool let up, and that was mostly because he was drilling a hole into his own pants. His loose sweatpants felt confining to the point of chaffing, and he was ready to toss his self-consciousness out of the window. The sun had set even lower now, turning the sky into a fiery canvas; Peter might still be able to see him, but the semi-darkness would make Wade feel better.

Peter shuddered as Wade’s fingers left him, and the ex-mercenary wiped them uncaringly on the bed sheets. He’d wash them.

Eventually.

As Wade took his sweats off, Peter flipped around to lay on his back. He looked glossy eyed and _wrecked_ , hair disheveled like he’d already been fucked six ways to sunday, torso a lovely shade of red. Peter's bottom lip was puffy and swollen where he’d likely bit at it to hold back his cries, although, Wade thought smugly, he hadn’t been that successful.

Wade hesitated, unsure how to proceed. It wasn’t like he could transmit anything, but of course there was the clean up factor to consider. He supposed Peter may want to go for protection just for that alone, although, if he _wanted_ to feel the scars—

“Wade,” Peter’s husky voice was music to his ears, “ _get over here.”_

Forcing himself not to salute and say “Sir, yes sir”, Wade dropped the condom he’d been deliberating over and crawled up Peter’s body. Every place their skin touched felt like fire catching, and by the time he was looking into Peter’s eyes, Wade felt like he would combust.

Hell, as if he wasn’t going to burn in the best way.

Wade kissed him, deep and slow, tonguing at Peter’s sore bottom lip. God, he looked good all pouty like that, fat bottom lip raw and abused. He wondered how it would look stretched out and wrapped around his dick. It twitched, interested. They’d have plenty of time for that later.

Right now, however…

“How do you want—?”

Up close Wade could see Peter’s pupils blown wide, almost all of that mesmerizing hazel gone and given way to black. It thrilled him to see the other man so affected by him. He wouldn’t have imagined in a hundred years this outcome could have happened after their trip down memory lane.

But honestly, he’d do it over again a thousand times more if it meant he even got to have just a taste of what he had so far.

“Just like this,” Peter instructed, lifting his leg, easy as you please, so Wade could grab it. He let it settle in the crook of his elbow, but Peter shook his head.

“Don’t worry about me, I’m super bendy. Like _this_ ,” Peter repeated more firmly, letting his leg lift higher to rest on Deadpool’s shoulder. Wade raised his eyebrows; if he had any, if he had _hair_ , they’d have been lost in his hairline.

Fuck, Wade was a steel rod, straight up iron dick, completely unrelated to the flying dildo they both knew. He scrambled for the lube bottle he’d tossed somewhere in the bedsheets, trying not to jostle Peter too much, and slicked himself up. There was no going back now, not with Peter grasping desperately at him and his dick two minutes from falling off.

If he died right now, surely this would be his little slice of heaven.

They both moaned as Wade finally, _finally_ pushed in. The tightness squeezing all sanity out of him. He tried his best to go slow, be _mindful_. He didn’t want to hurt Peter unnecessarily, but with Peter clawing at his shoulders and panting in his ear, it was making it damn hard to act like a gentleman.

Something cracked within him, right down the middle, as he slid all the way in. It didn’t bother him, Wade was used to being broken. He’d let this man shatter him into a thousand pieces if it meant he could have this. Have Peter. Overwhelming emotions mixed with intense sensation to bombard him in a twin attack and Wade paused for a second, their foreheads resting against one another, breath mingling, before he slid out and gave a hard thrust back in.

Peter bowed, crying out as Wade somehow nailed that spot inside him as he dove back in relentlessly, and thank God his neighbors were used to loud, obnoxious noises coming from Wade’s apartment. They knew not to come banging on his door (mostly because an alarming array of weapons had been shoved in their faces whenever they did, but hey, whatever worked to keep the neighbors out of his biz, right?).

Fuck, it felt like the best damn inferno, hot and tight and _perfect_ , of course, there was never any doubt in his mind Spidey wouldn’t be, but this was almost too much. Peter tightened around him with every thrust, making the movement feel exquisitely torturous.

The leg on his shoulder slipped, and Wade decided _fuck it_. He grabbed for it, gripping it tightly as he held it up towards Peter’s chest, bending with it to give Peter a bruising kiss on his lips. Wade kept his other hand on the headboard, using it for stability and momentum, and each powerful thrust caused it to bang against the wall until it was an odd sexual tempo of growls and moans and loud knocking noises.

There was no drawn out love making or beautiful magic filled with gazing eyes and soft shared kisses; this was years of pent up emotions and lust, both of them finally having an outlet for that which their desires sought. Wade let his kisses trail down to a thrown-back neck, Peter panting heavily as Wade continued his relentless speed.

Peter whimpered when Wade bit down and gasped out, “Shit, Wade, I’m gonna—”

Instantly, his hand on the headboard came down to wrap around Peter’s gorgeous, leaking cock. He’d neglected it in his mission for momentum, but with his own release creeping upon him, he wanted them to reach that glorious end together.

Peter moaned as a scarred hand wrapped around him tightly, jacking him sloppily, attempting to match thrusts with hand movements. Both of them were past the point of caring about coordination, and as Wade felt the familiar tightening in his gut, that tingling sensation spreading throughout his body, Peter tensed underneath him and came, blinding beautiful like a supernova.

That was all it took for Wade to follow; then it was a rapture, a typhoon of pleasure, as he came and came and came until he was afraid he might die here, drained by this gorgeous man beneath him.

Death by amazing sex sounded like a pretty good epitaph, didn’t it?

Wade stilled, muscles protesting as he hovered himself over Peter so as to not squish him, and it took him a moment or two until he could properly pull out and roll over. He felt floaty and sore and thoroughly sexed-out.

Shit, he hadn’t had sex like that since—

He waited for the painful reminder of Vanessa to wash over him, but the sadness didn’t come at the thought. Instead, a strange tinge of reminiscence took hold. Somehow, he knew that the gaping hole her absence left had been filled, not just by Peter, but by seeing that memory of her again. It’s helped him to remember the good moments, when he’d know, _she’d known_ , he’d loved her as best as he could. Seeing the memory had only reaffirmed that.

Wade glanced over at Peter, whose eyes were closed, chest still heaving.

He was going to do the same for Peter, if he’d let him.

Wade rested for a moment, body quickly recuperating from it’s exertion, before he leaned over to grab his discarded shirt.

He swiped at Peter’s chest, gently wiping him up as best he could. Nobody wanted _that_ stuck to them for post-coital snuggling.

Peter cracked an eye open and laughed, the sound tinkling like bells and whatever other romance shit Wade’s brain was conjuring up post orgasmic bliss. Peter snickered again, closing his eyes as he joked, “That shirt’s pretty accurate.”

Wade looked down, noticing the writing. The laughter that escaped him felt light and free, nothing like the laughter that usually left him. The man he’d once been that was hidden away beneath a broken, scarred shell missed having moments like this, he realized.

“I’ve got plenty of donations left in me,” Wade quipped suggestively with one final swipe before he threw the shirt in the direction of his laundry pile. “Just let me know when you’re ready for them, baby boy.”

For once the nickname didn’t get met with exasperation. Instead, Peter curled into him as he laid back down, and Wade tensed, for a moment, before letting his arm wrap around the snuggling man. This. This was just as nice as all the rest of it. Wade felt the deep rumble of satisfaction escape him, and he didn’t even try to stop it.

It was an odd habit, he knew. One that Vanessa used to tease him relentlessly for, and one none of the other warm bodies he’d hired had ever stuck around to hear, but as he drifted into a hazy place of relaxation, loose-limbed and sated, Deadpool started to hum. Soft, barely heard, except by a spider’s super hearing.

Peter joined in, half-singing, half-whispering softly, “ _Thanks for the memories, even though they weren't so great_ _.”_

Eyes cracked open and mouth agape, Wade gazed down in amazement at Peter nestled contentedly on his chest.

“Now I _know_ I’m in love.”

Peter laughed quietly, a sound just for the two of them. “You had doubts before?”

Wade paused. He already knew the answer to that.

“Never, Baby boy. Never.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again for reading this monster of a fic!
> 
> Masterpost of the beautiful work done by Moemai can be found [here](https://www.moemai.fr/post/643487370025549824/once-again-i-had-the-pleasure-to-work-with-an).


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